Burlap & Barrel, the popular spice company located in New York City performed a culinary stunt this year. The spice company has left a notable footprints in the hearts of chefs and house cooks with their distinct and unique sourced, specific origin and generally exquisite ingredients. Around May, the spice company co founders decided to travel to North (Adirondack Mountain to be precise) in search of Ramp leaves during the period of the popular wild plant fleeting period rather than traveling to the usual India for Turmeric spices, Egypt for Caraway seeds as well as Guatemala for Cardamom. This was mainly due to the pandemic as there were various travel restrictions from different countries.
The co founders of Burlap & Barrel; Frisch and Zohar developed the spice company with the aim of reducing the long haul between consumers and quality spice farmers. Surprisingly, most of these spice farmers operate near home. Frisch has stated that the collaborated with a maple syrup farmer due to the fact that the environment of maple forests are suitable for Ramp collection. He further said that their seasonal farm workers had concluded with tapping of the maples before the COVID-19 issue began and the team couldn’t travel and had to remain in the state. They decided to hire them to go for Ramp search for three weeks and collect the ramps wherever they find them. At the end of the search session, the team gathered about 1000 pounds of new and fleshy leaves without touching the bulbs so as to allow the regeneration of the plants. The ramp leaves were shipped immediately to Burlap & Barrel Co packer, dried out and packaged for all year use. Frisch stated. that these Ramp leaves were prepared and refined in not less than 24-hours.
Apart from their energetic and tasty spring onion flavor, the sold out dehydrated and dry ramp leaves has boosted up Burlap & Barrel towards the path of producing more natural spices to their spice collection. Even though there has been an increase in the rate of local agro-business, the sources of natural spices has been mostly unseen. Most spices such as Peppercorns, Vanilla beans and Cinnamon grow well in hot and humid regions rather than the moderate climate seen in many countries in US. Frisch said that you can likely grow spices like that in the Florida or Hawaii but still some are likely to do well in the regions stated above. Customers haven’t searched for nearby spices with any genuine enthusiasm. According to Lior Lev Sercarz; Founder of the New York based boutique La Boite, individuals go nuts about the sources of the vegetables, chicken as cheese but that cannot be said for spices. Generally, spices are mostly used as a second option or just as an additional ingredient to food items. Spices are not being seen as a necessity and a must-have ingredient. He further said that a scramble of heated Hungarian paprika boiling in a hot oil or a delicious ringlet of India-made cumin twisting up from the spice blender enables chefs to travel around the world while staying comfortably in their respective kitchens. However, it doesn’t offer them the opportunity to visualize the capability of locally made spices or how the taste and aroma of well developed local spices surpasses that of foreign spices.