At times confused with fennel or star anise, anise has a distinct, strong - yet sweet, licorice flavor. Fennel (often mislabeled "sweet anise") tends to be more delicate than anise, while star anise contains slightly more bitter compounds and is used most often in Asian cuisines. The anise plant strongly resembles dill, cumin, and fennel, as all belong to the same seed-bearing-plant family. It grows to approximately two to three feet high and has feathery leaves and a small umbrella-like cluster of white flowers, which eventually provide aniseed.

As Pliny the Elder wrote of aniseed, 'Be it green or dried it is wanted for all conserves and flavorings.' A native to the eastern Mediterranean region and southwest Asia, anise is now grown around the world and enjoyed most often in an array of confections and beverages. It's licorice, mint-like flavor gives unique qualities to French pastis, Greek ouzo and Turkish raki. Anise is also used to flavor cough drops, sausages, sauces, and chutneys, and easily complements meals consisting of beets, carrots, fish, melon, oranges or pork.

When thinking back to your last visit to an Afghan or Indian restaurant, you may recall receiving a bowl of slightly roasted and sometimes sugar coated aniseeds at the end of your meal. These pale brown, crescent shaped seeds are traditionally chewed after meals to simply sweeten the breath and aid in digestion. Not surprisingly, the anise flavor is welcomed following a highly spiced meal and helps calm your pallet.

Culinary tips: It is best to buy seeds whole and grind as required, as the seeds quickly lose their flavor. The large, bulbous base of the anise plant and stems can also be used in cooking. First remove the tough outer portions of the base and reserve for stock. Then thinly slice the remaining portions into a salad, use in soups or steam as a simple side dish. For dessert, try our rich Champurrado Tart (Chocolate and Anise Tart).

By Ellie Downing

Paprika derives its origin in chile peppers native to the Americas, which were transported to Europe after Columbus' discovery of the New World. It was the Spaniards who first dried and ground up the spicy red peppers that they had begun to cultivate in their own country. In Spain, the peppers lost their fiery heat, and became a much milder spice that suited many traditional dishes. The new spice quickly spread throughout the rest of Europe, because of its ability to adapt to its new environment, and because it was less expensive than the popular Asian spices at the time. Remember that black pepper used to be a spice only affordable by the wealthy in medieval Europe. Today paprika is quite common in Hungarian, Balkan, and Turkish cooking, even more so than black pepper.

Spanish cuisine employs paprika of three categories: sweet, bittersweet, and hot. The best paprika comes from La Vera, which is in the southwestern province of Extremadura. Hungarian cooking incorporates 6 varieties of paprika, which are categorized according to their strength and heat. The differences in the types of paprikas are made by how much of the seeds and veins are incorporated with the ground- up pepper.

Paprika is a great spice to add to hummus and other dishes that do well with a hit of smokiness. It is also a great spice to mingle with cumin, parsley, garlic, and olive oil.

Looking at your pepper mill sitting on the kitchen table, it is easy to forget black pepper's contribution to food preparation around the world, as well as the role it has played in history. Yet don't let the ubiquitous nature of this spice fool you. This seemingly humble berry used to be so valuable that countries felt the need to find faster, safer routes to India in order to improve their access to this and other spices, which ultimately led to the European "discovery" and colonization of many different parts of the world.

Pepper has been used as a spice in India since pre-historic times and has been documented as being used throughout the Roman Empire for food preparation. Now it is one of the most used spices in the world, found in all different types of cuisine as a way to bring a spicy heat to food. Originally from India, specifically from what is now the southwestern state of Kerala, black pepper now also comes from Vietnam, Indonesia and Brazil.

Black pepper is the result of fermenting and drying the still immature, and therefore green, berries of the Piper nigrum vine. This is the same vine that produces white and red peppercorns, and so it is the preparation process the producing the dark color of black peppercorns.

As with other spices, pepper loses its aroma and taste once ground into a powder, and so it is best to keep it in the peppercorn form as long as possible and grind it when needed to cook or flavor food. When not using your peppercorns, it is best to keep them in an airtight container so as to preserve the spiciness of the pepper. So next time a recipe calls for a quick dash of salt and pepper, take a second to think about how a small little pod has managed to travel around the world in order to season your next meal to perfection.