Post by braided-rug on May 19, 2007 11:06:44 GMT 10
Quatre Epices simply means "four spices" in French
Our original Quatre Epices blend is a traditional mix of white pepper, nutmeg, ginger and cloves. This blend is used extensively in charcuterie, and is therefore superb in sausages, terrine, pate and meatloaf, or simply as an alternative to ground pepper. The new Quatre Epices Sweet was added to our range after we visited France earlier this year and saw how frequently this blend is used. What makes it different is that the blend has allspice in place of white pepper, still with nutmeg, ginger and cloves. It can be used either in the same way as the other Quatre Epices, or as a more pungent alternative to Mixed Spice.
So what makes it different to Mixed Spice? Mixed spice has the same four ingredients, plus larger amounts of the sweeter and milder spices of coriander seed, cassia and cinnamon. Therefore, while you can use lashings of Mixed Spice and be pretty confident that you can't actually use too much, you must use a lighter hand with the more pungent Quatre Epices Sweet. For your Christmas baking, a subtle combination of the two blends would be to use proportions of 4 to 1 (that is, 2 teaspoons of Mixed Spice with one half a teaspoon of Quatre Epices Sweet).
There have been signs in certain restaurants and the media that French cooking is coming back into fashion, after being ousted by Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Indian, Italian, Moroccan et al. It's nice to know that something really good can't just be disposed of forever. When we were in France, we had a feeling of 70's déjà vu, as we encountered such old classics as pepper steaks with fries (French, of course!) England's foot and mouth problems certainly didn't affect the availability of beef in France!
From: www.herbies.com.au/news/spring2001.html
Our original Quatre Epices blend is a traditional mix of white pepper, nutmeg, ginger and cloves. This blend is used extensively in charcuterie, and is therefore superb in sausages, terrine, pate and meatloaf, or simply as an alternative to ground pepper. The new Quatre Epices Sweet was added to our range after we visited France earlier this year and saw how frequently this blend is used. What makes it different is that the blend has allspice in place of white pepper, still with nutmeg, ginger and cloves. It can be used either in the same way as the other Quatre Epices, or as a more pungent alternative to Mixed Spice.
So what makes it different to Mixed Spice? Mixed spice has the same four ingredients, plus larger amounts of the sweeter and milder spices of coriander seed, cassia and cinnamon. Therefore, while you can use lashings of Mixed Spice and be pretty confident that you can't actually use too much, you must use a lighter hand with the more pungent Quatre Epices Sweet. For your Christmas baking, a subtle combination of the two blends would be to use proportions of 4 to 1 (that is, 2 teaspoons of Mixed Spice with one half a teaspoon of Quatre Epices Sweet).
There have been signs in certain restaurants and the media that French cooking is coming back into fashion, after being ousted by Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Indian, Italian, Moroccan et al. It's nice to know that something really good can't just be disposed of forever. When we were in France, we had a feeling of 70's déjà vu, as we encountered such old classics as pepper steaks with fries (French, of course!) England's foot and mouth problems certainly didn't affect the availability of beef in France!
From: www.herbies.com.au/news/spring2001.html