Alternative title: Spice up your Life
The other week there
was a really interesting article in the Guardian about out of date spices.
“We
called it the “Ottolenghi effect”. Where once our spice cupboard was really just
dried basil and mild curry powder, suddenly it was playing host to harissa and
sumac and saffron. And then we forgot all
about them. According to a recent survey, there are £240m worth of unused
spices languishing in UK kitchens. And 13% of us confess to owning jars of
spices more than four years out of date.”
(Paraphrased)
I have always wondered
about out of date spices. There are many family stories about jars of spices
older than various family members, significant world events etcetera. It was
reassuring to read that it isn’t just us.
Spices are brilliant,
adding flavour and depth without extra fat or sugar. A good way to ensure that
you don’t end up with four-years out of date spices is to incorporate more of
them into every day cooking. Especially during these dark winter days, spices
can add exoticism, and a kind of festive familiarity.
The history of spices
is really fascinating, their usage spans so many different aspects of our
history, discovering civilisations and causing wars. There is archaeological
evidence of spices being traded since ancient times, from the Maluku Islands
(Spice Islands) in Indonesia spreading throughout the ancient world. From around
1600, spices had such high value in Europe that the Portuguese, Dutch and
English fought to gain a monopoly over the trade. The fighting was so intense
in the 17th and 18th centuries that the Dutch gave the island of Manhattan to the British in exchange for the
tiny island of Run in the Spice Islands, giving the Dutch full control over
nutmeg production. Many of islands’ populations were killed off during the so-called
‘Spice Wars’.
Here are some words and
recipe ideas about some of my favourite spices.
Cardamom
Green cardamom is
native to India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan. The seed pods look a bit like
lemon pips, with a few black seeds inside. There are references to cardamom in
the Bronze-Age Mycenaean Greek Linear B tablets (incidentally, I wrote an essay
on Linear B for my masters, in case you are interested), and in the New
Testament.
They can be used whole,
lightly bashed, or split open and the seeds ground. They are intensely
fragrant, and work really well in sweet and savoury dishes. If using whole
pods, make they are removed after cooking. Cardamom is a
common ingredient in Indian and South Asian cooking, used in curries,
traditional sweets and masala chai. It is used in Scandinavian
pastries, to flavour coffee and as a botanical in gin. Cardamom seeds can also be chewed, like chewing gum to freshen
breath.
Green cardamom also has a lot of
medical uses. It has been used to treat infections in teeth and gums, to
treat throat issues, lung congestion and tuberculosis, digestive disorders,
kidney stones and gall stones. It has also reportedly been used as an antidote for
snake and scorpion venoms.
Here is my
interpretation of Ottolenghi’s pistachio and cardamom shortbread recipe. It
makes the most perfectly crumbly, short (positively tiny) biscuits, and the
dough freezes well too.
Cloves
Cloves are the flower
buds of a tree native to the Spice Islands, and have been found in
archaeological remains going as far back as 1721 BCE. Cloves are used in the cuisine of
Asian, African, and the Near and Middle East, flavouring meats, curries, rice,
and sweet dishes.
Cloves
are used in Ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine
and dentistry, where
their essential
oil is used as a painkiller. This oil can
also be used to anesthetize
fish (I’m not sure how that was discovered), and repel ants!
Many Ashkenazi Jews use
cloves as part of the ritual to mark the end of Shabbat, and for years that was
all I thought cloves were for – getting stale in silver little boxes, brought
out on Saturday night for a quick sniff, and put away for another week. While
now of course I use cloves for so many other things, for me they always smell
of that particular time.
Cloves are a key
ingredient for my seasonal favourites, mulled wine and cranberry sauce. I
genuinely don’t know how I would get through winter without them. My favourite
recipe for cranberry sauce comes from Delia Smith, it is zingy and delicious. When cooking with cloves, be careful to count them, so you know how many to remove;
nobody wants to bite down on a clove.
Coriander seeds
I absolutely love coriander seeds,
and probably get through more of them than any other whole spice. They taste
completely different from coriander leaf: when toasted and crushed they are
lemony citrus, nutty and warm, with none of the leaf’s soapy tang. Coriander
grows wild through most of the Near East and southern Europe. Traces have been
found in the Pre-Pottery Nahal Hemar Cave in Israel, which may be the oldest archaeological find of
coriander in the world. A lot of coriander was also found in the tomb of Tutankhamen.
Whole and ground
coriander seeds are used widely in Indian curries, in its ground form used to
help thicken curries as well as flavour them. Outside of Asia, coriander seeds are widely used when pickling vegetables, making sausages, brewing beer, or making rye bread.
One of my favourite
ways to use coriander seeds is with roasted vegetables. Toast the seeds in a
dry frying pan, and then roughly crush them in a mortar and pestle. Mix the
crushed seeds with olive oil and a pinch of salt, and coat lumps of sweet
potato, butternut squash, or cauliflower, and roast in a hot oven until cooked
through and caramelised, with crunchy bits. This will take around 30-45 minutes
for the sweet potato and butternut squash, and about 20 minutes for the
cauliflower. Serve with a drizzle of tahini sauce.
 |
| Toasted coriander seeds and peanuts, crushed for this aubergine curry recipe |
Mustard seeds
Mustard seeds, funnily
enough, are the seeds from mustard plants! They range in colour from pale
yellow to black. Despite having such a strong flavour, they seem to be a really
multi-purpose spice. I love the zing they give to dishes, and the fact that
they always try and jump of the pan when being toasted, like they know what is
about to happen.
When researching
mustard seeds (on Wikipedia), I found that they are mentioned in quite a few
religious or mythological texts*. Clearly mustard seeds have for centuries
inspired people to think about their place in the world, and I think that is
really special.
The earliest reference to mustard seeds
comes from the Indian story of Gautama Buddha in the fifth century BC. Gautama Buddha told
the story of the grieving mother and the mustard seed. When a mother loses her
only son, she takes his body to the Buddha to find a cure. The Buddha asks her
to bring a handful of mustard seeds from a family that has never lost a child,
husband, parent, or friend. When the mother is unable to find such a house in
her village, she realizes death is common to all, and she cannot be selfish in
her grief.
In the New Testament, the
mustard seed is used by Jesus as a metaphor for
‘the Kingdom of God’, which starts small, but grows to be the largest of all
garden plants.
He said,
“How will we liken the Kingdom of God? Or with what parable will we illustrate
it? It’s like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth,
though it is less than all the seeds that are on the earth, yet when it is
sown, grows up, and becomes greater than all the herbs, and puts out great
branches, so that the birds of the sky can lodge under its shadow.”
—
Mark 4:30–32
Jewish texts compare the knowable
universe to the size of a mustard seed, demonstrating the world's
insignificance and teaching humility. The
medieval Jewish Scholar and philosopher, Nahmanides (the Ramban) writes that the universe expanded from the time of its
creation, in which it was the size of a mustard seed.
Mustard seeds work incredibly well
in curries and Middle Eastern style stews. Make a quick and refreshing carrot
salad to accompany an Indian meal by combining julienned or shredded carrots
with toasted mustard seeds and a little lemon juice. Whole grain mustard is
also a fantastic ingredient, making a wonderful vinaigrette or as a surprising
addition to cheese sauce.
*Religious as mythological?? Look into Karen
Armstrong if you are interested.
Sumac
I wasn’t sure if I
should include sumac, because it has become a bit of a cliché. But it really is
one of my favourite spices, tasting a little bit like a cross between lemon and
paprika. I seem to be adding it to pretty much everything these days.
Sumac is a dried berry
of any one of 35 species of plants (Rhus genus), and is found throughout
subtropical and temperate regions in the world, especially in Africa and North
America. The berries are ground into a reddish-purple powder, used a lot in
Middle Eastern cuisine. I had no idea that they had a history of usage in North
America, so imagine my surprise when I came across ‘sumacade’! Like lemonade,
but with sumac! Apparently Native Americans also used to combine sumac with
tobacco and smoke it!
Sumac is a lot easier
to get hold of here than it used to be, and it can often be found in most
decent ethic corner shops, and many supermarkets. Nothing is as fun as getting huge
red baggies of the stuff in middle-eastern markets.
Add a heaped teaspoon
of sumac to a salad of chopped tomatoes, onion and parsley for that surprisingly
authentic kebab-shop taste, or use it to roast or fry courgettes.
Turmeric
Sunshine
yellow turmeric is
a rhizome,
similar to ginger and galangal, native to southeast India.
It has been used in Asia for medicinal purposes for
thousands of years, as a remedy for stomach and liver
ailments, as well as to heal sores. As of December 2013, turmeric is
being evaluated for its potential efficacy against several human diseases,
including kidney and cardiovascular
diseases, arthritis, Alzheimer's, and irritable
bowel disease.
Turmeric is considered to be highly
auspicious and holy in India, and it is used extensively in Hindu ceremonies. In
the mythology of the ancient Tamil religion, turmeric was associated with the
sun (Thirumal). The solar plexus chakra is yellow, which in traditional Tamil Siddha medicine is the
energy centre relating to the metabolic and digestive systems.
As well as its many culinary,
spiritual and medicinal uses, turmeric is also used as a colouring. It is used
in canned beverages, baked products, dairy products, orange juice and popcorn.
Turmeric is used widely in Indian
and Middle Eastern cooking. As well as its fabulous, joyful colour, it also
adds to flavour profiles helping create depth and overall flavour. I really
like it because eating bright yellow food just makes me happy. At the moment I
am using buckets of turmeric making celeriac sofrito, my delicious (if a bit
farty) winter staple. Turmeric, along with cloves, coriander seed and cardamom
also come together to make perfect pilau rice (to be blogged soon).
