Turmeric Wrap

Actually, I'm not making a wrap - I'm drawing Week Turmeric to a close. I never did a generic “This is your turmeric” entry, so I’ll use this one as a place to share some things about turmeric that have been wandering around my head.


1: What is turmeric, anyway?

One thing I really need to do - and please feel free to send me suggestions - is come up with a standard list of background questions on each spice that I can go over. I'm not talking all the history stuff; I'm talking the practical things, like whether there are different forms you can get the spice in, and where you might have to go to get it. The kind of thing I did extensively for salt... and honestly, burned myself out a little bit on.

Luckily for me, turmeric is a bit boring in that regard. Turmeric is a rhizome - the horizontal underground stem of a plant which sending shoots upwards and roots downward. If you've ever seen whole ginger root, it's basically the same thing, except turmeric is less fractal and more orange.

Technically, turmeric does have different variations - but most of us will never have any use for anything except turmeric powder. There is also white turmeric, which is used in some parts of southeast Asia - but it doesn't taste as good, so it doesn't get used much. Then there's the raw turmeric root, which you can use just like you can use ginger root. The thing is - and I honestly haven't been able to figure out why - we don't. You can buy turmeric root online, but even big spice merchants don't really have much of it; there's just not much call for it. Poking around online, it honestly seems that nobody has the slightest clue what to do with it, except "use a microplane to grate it". IE, turn it into a powder. So, we use the powdered form, and that's about it.

Turmeric's nickname is "Indian saffron", and that gives you an idea of the high regard that people hold it in. After all, saffron is the most expensive spice in the world; an ounce of good saffron costs more than a share of Apple stock; three ounces of top-quality stuff are a good trade for an ounce of gold.

I'm not going to lie to you - I am probably not going to be doing a saffron week.


Turmeric also seems to be approximately as medicinal as water from the Holy Grail. It's been shown in studies to fight everything from acne to uveitis (inflammation of the eyes) with stops at joint pain, arthritis, about ninety forms of cancer, and even HIV. (Actually, alphabetically the farthest down I got was "viral infections", but honestly, it was cooler to write uveitis.)

Excuse me, I need to readjust my IV turmeric drip. That's better.


2: Science gets its due

How were the turmeric stuffed mushrooms? Really boring, actually; I wasn’t much of a fan. Turmeric is a deep bass note, the kind of thing that you don’t notice while it’s there, and might not even notice consciously when its gone. You just notice that something is missing, that the music doesn’t flow as well, that there’s nothing at the bottom for everything else to build upon. But at the same time, a foundation on its own isn’t that interesting. Nobody ever got up on stage with their bass guitar and started belting out tunes.

Well, I’m sure that tons of people have. But nobody ever got famous that way, is really what I mean. There aren’t a ton of famous bass solos in the history of rock.

That’s turmeric stuffed mushrooms – a guy sitting at a local bar on open mike night with his friggin’ bass. Sure, the verses really come across clearly, but when the chorus comes around, and the music is supposed to do something on its own, there’s just nothing. The turmeric really brought out the flavor of the other ingredients… but I was left asking, “yeah? What else?” Nothing sang.


I guess it didn’t really occur to me until this moment just how valuable an idea these mushrooms are. I mean, the purpose of this blog is to learn about the uses of various spices. I’ve been cooking with turmeric for a week, and it wasn’t until I started writing about why I was disappointed with the mushrooms that I realized that I had simply learned when to use turmeric, not why. But the why is in the paragraph above. Turmeric is a foundation; a rich, earthy bass note that can form a brilliant foundation for a medley of spices. On its own, it’s going to leave you somewhat hollow, but team it with the right support, and it’s absolutely brilliant.


3: I probably should have said this at the beginning of the week.

Turmeric gets on everything. The bad news is that it’s used a dye, as well as a spice, so it sticks around. One of my cutting boards has a yellowish cast to it now, as well as one of my plastic mixing bowls. The good news is that it’s a dye, yes, but it’s a fairly lousy dye. It’s not particularly lightfast, which means that it fades fairly easily when exposed to light. But, since my cutting boards don’t exactly spend a lot of time out in the sun, I’m not really counting on that effect.

The upshot of this all is be careful when cooking with turmeric. Mix in glass or ceramic vessels, and don’t leave something covered in turmeric on anything that can absorb the color for any length of time. At the same time, as fair as dyes go, it’s a fairly delicious dye. Those pictures of yellow rice that I had up the other day? Remember, that started out as ordinary white rice. The rich yellow color was all from the turmeric. I can definitely see using turmeric as a food coloring. So does the food industry; turmeric is a big part of what gives the yellow color to yellow mustard. If you're seeing a bright yellow color in food, chances are turmeric isn't far away.


4: Further experiments for the reader.

Not every song wants a squealy guitar. Not every song wants a fiddle or a trumpet, and songs that don’t want something that’s going to stand front and center like that are probably going to be ruined by its inclusion. But you know what? It’s really hard to ruin something by adding a bass line. And I think you could probably put turmeric in a bunch of fairly odd places without harming the flavor at all. Desserts, for instance.

I can actually see using turmeric as a coloring in something like cupcakes or frosting without it setting off any sensory alarm bells. The same is quite probably true about spongy cakes in general; if you want to give something a rich yellow color, you could probably do it with a bit of turmeric, and just let the flavor blend into the background.

I’m not, to be perfectly honest, a huge cake person; I’m much more of a pie guy. But Joe sent me a recipe for Sfouf, a middle eastern almond cake, that uses turmeric: http://mideastfood.about.com/od/dessertssweetspastries/r/sfoufrecipe.htm. I can see this really working well together - in this case, the turmeric enhancing the flavor of the almonds. Where I really think it would shine, though, would be in a super-sweet deserts like baklava, where the turmeric would add great color, but where the earthiness would also blend well with the main flavors of the dish.

Hmm. Turmeric in baklava sounds great. If anyone decides to try it, please email me to tell me how it works out.


As closes Turmeric, so opens Cumin. See you all on Monday!