Spices derived from the fruit of nutmeg tree - muskatnika (myristica fragrans houtt.) Muskatnikovyh family, from 6 to 18 meters high.
Motherland - the eastern part of the Moluccas. Grows and is cultivated in tropical countries of Southeast Asia - Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as on some islands.
One tree yields from 1500 to 2000 fetuses. Nutmeg tree fruits are large, bright yellow or gray-yellow, peach-like fruit, which when fully ripe burst in half, exposing the seed is not fully covered with a thin, but quite meaty krovelkoy-prisemennikom (arillusom) and, moreover, a firm, woody, but a thin dark-brown shell (shell). Arillusa obtained from spice called mace sale and of the seed itself - a spice called nutmeg.
Mace.
Synonyms: mace, MEA. Mace, therefore, has nothing to do with flower nutmeg tree, and represents prisemennik, soft skin that is covering most of the nutmeg seed tree-like petals. fresh mace bright red (ruby) or bright crimson. After drying, the color changes to orange, and after a short storage in orange-yellow or dark yellow.
Arillus usually try to stay intact, squeezing out a nut. this case in the center of nutmeg color formed hole (hole), and the remaining after drying, which is recognized by the whole, undamaged mace, valued much higher than a damn. Drying is carried out on bamboo or coconut mats directly at the sun. The first sign of drying out, by the end of the first day, is the loss of mace juiciness, elasticity and bright colors: it becomes listless, bland. This pliable state it is given a flat appearance (his collapsed wooden "irons" or rollers) that in future, when it is completely dry (2-3 days) and become brittle, it was more convenient packaging and protected from breakage.
Ready good, good mace should be a rigid, very fragile, slightly translucent like a horn plate length of 3 - 4, 2-3 cm wide and 1 mm thick, smooth painted in bright orange or dark yellow color with a hole in the center and Divide the edges of the blades 10-15. Texture (fabric pattern) good mace always pronounced.
Best mace obtained from the so-called second leaflets lying closer to the seed.
More than anything in the world market valued Penang (best) mace and bandansky (high grade).
Nutmeg
Nutmeg is the result of more lengthy and complex process than mace. Excepted from the pericarp and seeds prisemennika muskatnika enter into a special drying - light bamboo construction with a slightly veiled palms roof, where the high bamboo goats bred small smokeless fire, and on the box in huge bamboo lattices placed muskatnika seeds. Fire maintained around the clock for six weeks, if drying is good, otherwise drying is delayed up to two or even three months, and every day by the end of the day nuts inverted wooden rake to drying proceeded as evenly as possible. When the nuts are dry and shell begins to lag behind the kernel (when you turn the nuts begin to rattle), their thin shell split wood or stone (but not metal) hammers or pestles and free kernel. These nuclei are ovoid, light brown, spotted with darker, and a little whimsical branching towering above the surface of walnut vial. But on this "adventure" nutmeg not stop there. Freed from the shell core is placed in just a few minutes on the milk of lime (a mixture of seawater and lime, limestone obtained from coral) and it was stirred thoroughly and then again dried in the shade of one to three weeks. Thus, the production of nutmegs sometimes delayed almost four months.
Nutmeg
Ready nutmeg is the core of a few rough ovoid (2-3 cm long and 1.5-2 cm in diameter), gray-brown, wrinkled light beige network of wrinkles. At one extreme nut - a bright spot on the other - a noticeable worse - dark brown, sometimes black. On the cut nutmeg has a distinctive marble pattern: on beige field - dark brown stripes, blotches.
Nutmeg and mace have different strong and delicate aroma and spicy pungent taste (different shades and timbre). These aromatic-flavor differences give reason to consider them quite similar to each other spices.Hence - the varying their scope. Sometimes they are used together as complementary and mutually enriching two different spices.
Nutmeg has a wider scope. It is used most often we in sweet dishes (jam, compotes, mousses, puddings, cheese pasta) and confectionery dough (pretzels, muffins, cakes, biscuits, cookies, sweet cakes). Western European cuisine nutmeg is used to flavor vegetables - salads and mashed potatoes (hot and cold) of potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, spinach, vegetable soups, almost all mushroom dishes (mushroom soups, sauces, salads, pickles, boiled mushrooms), in dishes of all kinds of poultry (chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese), in pasta, in a shallow dish of fatty game (quail), a gentle and fresh meats (veal, young pork), a dish of offal, and finally, in fish dishes (boiled and braised fish, fish soup, aspic). Most effectively use nutmeg in all sorts of dishes from fish and meat stuffing (rolls, casseroles) and generally in fillings, where the combination of meat (or fish) with vegetables, mushrooms, dough and sauces, many of which are attached to the main nutmeg flavor .
Mace is also used in most of these types of meals, except mushroom, fish, pasta and game dishes. Mace goes well with the nutmeg in meat dishes. As well as nutmeg, mace is an important component of different sauces, many of which he used independently (without nutmeg), giving them a particular flavor.
Interestingly, in sauces English and German cuisine nutmeg color always twice as much nutmeg (for example, in Yorkshire, Worcestershire, Cambridge and Frankfurt sauces), and vice versa, in sauces of French and Italian cuisine twice nutmeg (eg Bolognese sauce).
European kitchen is used as a spice matsisnoe oil - a colorless aromatic essence nutmeg color used in the preparation of aromatic mustard, ketchup and canning industry.
I must say that mace is always appreciated more nutmeg. first half of the XIX century it was 4 times more expensive nutmeg, by the end of the XIX century, this difference was halved. Nowadays mace only 25-30% more expensive than nutmeg, but it occurs in the sale is still much rarer.
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