The spice route

When I went downstairs this morning to prepare the kids' lunches, I was confronted with a sink full of dishes. I took out all of the dishes except the utensils, rinsed the sink, and prepared the water. As I was thinking about how I function as a 'housemaid', I recalled that during Ramadan I made a commitment to myself that I would just suck it up and wash the dishes...at that very moment, my finger came in contact with my daughter's chef knife and I ran upstairs to the bathroom as not to pollute the dishwater with the blood that was gushing from the wound.

When I returned to the kitchen, I realized that I am not that different from the imperial powers...akin to Christopher Columbus searching for an alternative route to the spice world. However, instead of traveling in the wrong direction and subsequently stumbling across a group of people rich in geologic resources, I meet people and exploit them for the culinary secrets of their culture and demand booty of spices from travelers - garam marsala, berbere, bizaara, ras el hanout - each region producing a distinctive spice blend (similar to a curry) based largely I imagine on what is naturally occurring...but instead of extinguishing these cultures, I keep them alive in the kitchen and actually wouldn't mind dabbling in the accompanying language.

It just occurred to me that my spice fetish is clustered in (or some might say dispersed throughout) one geographic area - from North Africa, to the Horn of Africa, across the Arabian Pennisula, and into the Indian Subcontinent (I have recently expanded west into Senegal) - a pseudo Ibn Battuta I suppose.

While these spice blends vary by geographic location, the cooking techniques and ingredients are quite similar- I imagine that is likely due to spatial interaction - the coming together of cultures along this trade route - why do these dishes often begin with sauteing onions until translucent then adding tomatoes? What is the hearth and pattern of diffusion of the onion and the tomato?

I dare not investigate these questions - because not only does that have nothing to do with the price of tea in China, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the correlation between socioeconomic status and position along the watershed.