New spice

Despite having more spices at home than I will ever possibly use, I occasionally come across a recipe which calls for something beyond my crowded drawer.

Three 'new' spices to sniff and palpate. The black seeds scattered on the table are the most sedate and benign of the three. Nigella - is quite refreshing in the mouth - woody and not unlike caraway in taste. The larger pods are Black cardamon. Bigger and more pungent than the green ones I am so familiar and enamoured with. The green pods are fresh and in parts of the world used to clean ones breath. I suspect their larger and darker cousins would be more suited to repelling moths. . . smoke and camphor is what I smell. The most curious one is Asafoetida - encased and cut with with flour, turmeric and gum arabic. It's pungent and stinky and clearly laden with -SH groups. It reminds me of durian which is also a concert of stinky thiol compounds. I can smell garlic and unwashed armpits. . .