Lavang, Ruang, Krambu, Cloves

Spice no. 15 

Lavang in Marathi and sonically variant names in others states. In English Cloves, which traces the origin of the name to nail. It does look like one and it has fascinated the whole world with this shape and everyone fell short of creativity, so all names refer to the nail. Well if the shape was so fascinating so were the properties of this spice. Its ayurvedic properties as an anti-bacterial, anti-septic, anti-fungal and analgesic makes is much sought after across the world.

Cloves are synonymous as tooth ache reliever. Since ancient times mothers have told their children to hold a clove on to the tooth that is aching. Cloves have  a very high concentration of essential oil in it. While a whole clove is ok to be used. Clove oil if used directly can give a burn it is therefore always used diluted with other oils and the quantities used are tiny. Cloves in India and China have always been used as mouth freshner in royal courts. In India one of the components of paan is clove. It has many poetic references too in our literature. 

Yet again this spice is not native to India but comes from the island of Maluku. The sweet smell of this spice growing in the islands attracted seafaring traders. Yet again it was the Arabs and then the Europeans that were attracted to this region. The Dutch controlled this spice for long time just like they did the nutmeg. In a  sad turn of fate Maluku lost its top producer title to the Mozambique islands and now it is Mozambique that exports cloves to Indonesia for the manufacturing of clove flavored cigarettes that their population is addicted to. 

Clove tree is an evergreen tree and the spice that we see is the flower bud. Picking cloves is fascinating and high skilled. The flower buds goes through color changes from pale yellow, pink to bright red when ready to be plucked and only the red ones is the bunch have to be plucked for best quality. 

Cloves are considered heat causing spice and therefore a component of garam masala. The fragrance of the spice and its tenderizing property sees its use in meat preparations. I have also seen cloves used as an aromatic spice in desserts especially in the South. Bengal has a dedicated sweet to this spice the Labango latika, a type of khaja with the clove nailed into it!