A low-growing, leafy tropical plant, which grows on the jungle floor in the wild. Cardamoms have smooth green leaves on long stalks, which are spicily scented when bruised. The leaves don't smell the same as the seeds, but can be used to wrap around fish, rice or vegetables to add flavour during cooking. The long stalks are useful to tie the leaves together to make a neat parcel of food. The cardamom pods sold for cooking are picked when unripe so the seeds will not grow if you try to sow them. <br /><br />Popularly known as "Queen of spices", small cardamom of commerce is an important and popular flavouring material and spice. The useful part is the dried mature fruit. It is usually referred to as capsule. Cardamom is used for flavouring curries, cakes, and bread and for other culinary purposes. It is also used as masticatory and for flavouring coffee and confectionery.<br /><br />An essential oil is obtained by steam distillation of the seeds, which is used for flavouring processed foods and liquors, in perfumery and beverages. The pleasant aroma and the characteristic warm, slightly pungent taste are due to numerous essential oil components present in the seeds.<br /><br />The earliest record of cardamom in India is in an Ayurvedic medical treatise compiled in BC 1000. Cardamom is a native of Western Ghats in South India. India had a virtual monopoly of cardamom till recently. But now it is being cultivated in Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Tanzania. Cardamom cultivation in India is confined to three States, viz. Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.<br /><br />Source : http://www.kew.org/plant-cultures/plants/cardamom_grow_it.html & http://cardamomindia.blogspot.in/<br /><br />This footage is part of the professionally-shot broadcast stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of HD imagery from South Asia. The Wilderness Films India collection comprises of tens of thousands of hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on HDCAM / SR 1080i High Definition, Alexa, SR, HDV and XDCAM. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We are happy to be commissioned to film for you or else provide you with broadcast crewing and production solutions across South Asia. We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world... Reach us at rupindang @ gmail . com and admin@wildfilmsindia.com.
