Indian cuisine is a combination of subtle tastes. Flavours are as varied as the climate of India and as exotic as the people of India. Fragrant spices, pungent and warm spices, are delicately blended in meticulous proportions to create each dish which will have its own distinctive flavour from spices which have to prepared each day afresh. The blending and preparation of spices is a centuries old craft to Indian cuisine

Turmeric With its rich curcumin content, which imparts the distinctive yellow colour, and other inherent qualities, Indian turmeric is considered the best in the world.

Coriander The name `coriander' is based on the Greek work `kopis' which means `bug'. Coriander requires full exposure to sunlight but with less heat and medium-to-heavy loamy soil, good drainage and well-distributed moisture.

Chillies India's most important contribution to the world of spices. An annual plant, chilli comes in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colours and in different degrees of pungency.

Cumin Though native to Egypt and the Mediterranean, cumin is now mostly produced in India.

Fenugreek The ripe, dried fruit of a quick-growing annual leguminous herb, fenugreek has a strong, pleasant and quite peculiar odour reminiscent of maple.

Pepper Popularly known as the `King of Spices', the best quality pepper is grown in the monsoon forests along the Malabar Coast in South India.

Fennel Ancient Indians used fennel as a condiment and culinary spice. In Greece, it was a symbol of success. In Rome, the young fennel shoots were used as food. Pliny considered it good for improved vision. Culpeper recommends it as an antidote for poison.

Cardamom Large Large cardamom is the dried fruit of a perennial herbaceous plant. It's quality characteristics are different from that of small cardamom. The fruit is 4 to 6 times size of small cardamom.

Garlic Garlic is a hardy bulbous annual, with narrow flat leaves a pungent and acid flavour and acknowledged medicinal value. The entire bulb ('cloves') is almost without odour but, once cut, they produce an intensely strong and characteristic odour.

Asafoetida or asafoetid (Devil's Dung) is the dried latex (oleo-gum-resin) exuded from the living rhizome, rootstock or taproot of an umbelliferous plant of varied species. A popular spice in foods and medicines.

Basil is obtained from a small, erect, glabrous, profusely branched herb, indigenous to India. It forms part of the 'sweet' herbs. Basil is a member of the mint family. Basil is popular worldwide because of its rich aroma, attractive fragrance and superb blending properties when used in seasonings.

Kokam is an Indian spice with an agreeable flavour and sweet, acidic taste. Indian kokam is a versatile spice. Its oils, seeds, fruits, bark and the young leaves are all of extensive culinary and therapeutic value. The kokam fruit is cholagogue, cooling, demulcent, emollient and antiseptic. The bark and young leaves are astringent. The oil is emollient and soothing.

Saffron is the slender, dried, reddish-brown, flattened stigma of a small crocus of the iris family. It has a characteristic aromatic odour and a peculiar, exotic, bitter taste. It takes almost 100,000 hand-picked blooms to obtain just one Kilogram of dried saffron!. No wonder then that saffron holds the distinction of being the world's costliest spice.

Tamarind The fruit of a tropical tree. This spice also comes in the forms of pulp and juice concentrates which mainly go into the preparation of cool drinks, seafoods and a range of sophisticated cuisine.

Ginger has been cultivated in India both as a fresh vegetable and marketed as a dried spice since time immemorial. Ginger has always meant many things to many people. A taste- maker. A flavourant. An appetizer. A drug.