I have noticed that a lot of Indian recipes call for bay leaves, and I have seen bay leaves as one of the ingredients in garam masala recipes. However, when I have watched videos on YT I noticed that the bay leaves that some Indian cooks use are not like the ones I have. The colour is very similar, but the ones they are using look bigger and look more like a bay leaf stuck to a bigger leaf.

Incidentally I don't add bay leaves in garam masala. The only ingredients I add in GM are cassia bark, cloves, nutmeg, brown cardamom and black cumin seeds (which is the only spice out of all those I dry roast prior to grinding). I now grind the black pepper when I need it!

Sid.

bay leaves are not Indian, and have nothing to do with its cooking. What you describe (very well) is a leaf from a cassia tree, not necessarily the one the bark comes from. In India, it is called a tej patta. Bay leaves have one rib, tej patta have three. They can be very large indeed. Often used on their own to flavour rice, which I think marries very well with the flavour of basmati rice.

Its flavour, if it has any (most are too old to have flavour) is that of cassia, so adding it to GM is a waste. Bay leaves contain several of the main flavour compounds in green cardamom, mainly 8-cineol (also called eucalyptol), so again would be a waste if green cardamom was an ingredient in your GM.

Ah, thanks for that. Even the bay leaves I see for sale in the Indian supermarket are named tej patta, but looking at them they look just like the ones I get from my tree. Incidentally I never use bay leaves in Indian cooking. Green cardamom is not an ingredient in my GM.

Sid.

I use tej patta out of habit more than anything else. It has always been a part of garam masala in my mum's spice box, so it continues with me. May be it does add a little of it's oils! My own cooking is not based on understanding of chemistry, but it is lovely that Lapis can explain these things. My dad was a chemist and he was often telling my mum scientific reasons behind why things happened in/during cooking.

Indians mostly use cassia bark when they say cinnamon. This includes me. Both cinnamon and cassia are known as Dalchini in India. Not sure if you can find true cinnamon there, I don't remember seeing it. But then my memory is gpoing ;-)!

I find that cassia has very good flavour in garam masala and even when used in other dishes as part of 'whole' or sabut garam masala. I tend to use true cinnamon in desserts.

same here. It is interesting that dal chini means wood from China, meaning from outside India, rather than actually China. Cinnamon comes from Sri Lanka, of course, and cassia may have come from China originally.

Kebabchini is cubeb pepper, meaning pepper with a tail from 'China', but has been interpreted in India as a spice to put on or with kebabs.

Ahhh!!!! being used to bay leaves now for so long (even have a tree at home)that i almost forgot about tez patta, the leaf with more than one vein.

It could be Bay Leaves in your local indian supermarket. I supply my nearby shop in exchange for spices!

So you found some use for your (or was it your father's) large tree John, great! It gets pruned at the same time. LOL!