First, a quick update on the blog - I didn't manage to get anything posted over the weekend, so there's another quick post below this one, with possibly a third to come this afternoon if I remember what it was supposed to be about.
Ideally, I will get two posts written about coriander tomorrow and start week four off on Tuesday. That's what we call "aspirational." If that doesn't happen, I'm not sure what I'm going to do - I will probably throw in some short filler posts, either cumin-related or Batman-related, and then start coriander the Monday after.
I have to admit, the pace I set for myself is more than a bit ambitious. I really like having a solid posting schedule, and being able to have something go up every weekday. However, it seems more than likely that I'll find that I simply can't keep up with it, and I'm going to wind up taking a week off every three or four weeks. I don't particularly like that idea. The big problem I'm running into is this - when I have the weekend free, I can sit down and write most of the week's articles. But when I don't - like last weekend, when I went to visit my parents, then I fall behind very, very quickly. Luckily, having a baby means I don't have much of a life, but still...
So with that on the table, I'll repeat something I said a while ago - I'd love for people to contribute. Now, you wouldn't just have the enjoyment of participating - you'd also be helping me keep the schedule going! Either way, I'm going to try to keep juggling the best I can, and when I need to, I'll take a few days to catch up.
Or play Civilization IV. You know how it is.
Victoria and I tried something different with the mushrooms this week. Now, ideally, every week the mushrooms would use precisely the same recipe, because of SCIENCE. But the problem that I've mentioned before - that the mushrooms come out watery - is a vexing one, so I'm tinkering a bit. The first question that needed answering was where the water actually was coming from. I know that sounds odd - but I had a hard time figuring out if the water was pooling in the mushroom cap, or if it was being squeezed out of the mushroom itself when I bit down into it.
We decided the way to test that would be to put holes in the mushroom caps. Mushrooms are so spongy, though, that any holes would have to be fairly substantial in order to actually let water through - if you just stuck a knife into one (as we did) the hole will essentially close itself back up. So we tried a bunch of different methods on different mushrooms, to see which would be the most effective. In addition to the knife-slit, we did three other things:
1. Used a syringe to punch holes in the mushroom. These holes were also small enough that they pretty much just closed up.
2. Put one big drain-hole in the middle of the mushroom cap. This worked well - the water was unquestionably pooling in the cap, probably squeezed out of the mushroom itself as well as the fillings. The big hole let the water drain out, but it also ruined the structural integrity of the mushroom cap. Nobody wants to eat a floppy mushroom.
3. Put five smaller holes in the cap. Bigger than the syringe holes, smaller than the drain-hole one. To be honest, I have no idea what Victoria used to actually make these holes. This was the best of both worlds - enough space for the water to drain out, but the smaller holes didn't really interfere with my ability to pick up the mushroom and shove it into my mushroom-hole.
Mushroom mushroom mushroom. Mushroom. Okay, that word has lost its meaning.
So, those are preliminary results - we'll keep tinkering. Still got forty-nine trials left; I'm sure we'll get it.
As for the cumin - it was great. The mushroom experiment is a little bland - that's by design - but cumin had the power to make this a worthwhile dish on its own.
One thing I've really noticed is that some things really bring out the piquancy of cumin, while others do a great job of dampening it. (Piquancy is the sense of "hotness" you get from food - I'm going to use piquancy because using the word "spiciness" is pretty confusing in the context of a blog about spices.) I was told recently that lemon juice, for instance, does a great job of cutting the piquancy. Something in the mushrooms or the spinach kept a lid on the hotness; we used a fairly hefty amount of cumin but Victoria was still able to eat them comfortably.
There's still a lot to learn about cumin, to be honest - but I feel like I've made some good headway. Time for some sleep.
Showing posts with label Cumin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cumin. Show all posts
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Easy Refried Beans
It’s always good to have a few standards – quick and easy dinners that you can make from stuff that keep in either the freezer or the pantry. Pasta is the easiest example of this – I don’t know anyone who doesn’t keep a few boxes of pasta and a can or of tomato sauce in their house at all times.
One of our favorite standards are burritos. I’ll be honest – I’m not exactly going for authenticity here. I doubt the things that I make and call burritos have any relationship to actual burritos – but like the stuff I talked about in the last post, this is an evolved recipe. I started with an idea, and maybe even a recipe – but after a ton of tinkering, what I cook is nothing like what I started with.
I found the last ingredient this week in cumin. I’ve done middle eastern and a lot of Indian stuff… but cumin is used just as commonly in Mexican food. Again, another perfect example of why I started this project. Before I learned about cumin, I used some ground black pepper and red pepper flake. I never had any problem doing things that way – but now that I’ve used cumin instead, I’m unlikely to go back. The cumin was exactly what I needed to give this a little bit of oomph.
This isn’t the kind of thing I’d serve company, but Victoria and I probably wind up eating this once every week or two, because we’re too tired to do any serious cooking.
Quick Refried Beans
1 Onion, small, finely chopped
1/4 – 1/3 pound raw shrimp (51-60 count), peeled and cut into thirds
2 cloves garlic, minced
1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
1 15 ounce can each black beans and vegetarian refried beans
1 half-avocado, cut into small cubes
1 half-handful of yellow cheese – cheddar, Monterey jack, whatever.
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 pinch kosher salt
This recipe is piscetarian – suitable for people who don’t eat red meat or poultry, but do eat fish. If you want to make it vegetarian, or kosher, just remove the shrimp. Luckily for me, my wife thinks that shrimp are vegetables.
Put a small amount of your favorite type of oil in a pot on high heat. Toss in the shrimp, onion, garlic, and cumin, and let that cook for two or three minutes. When the onions look like they’re getting done, throw in the black beans, including about a third of the liquid from the can. When the beans start simmering, which should be fairly soon, throw in the refried beans. They’ll start out as a gloopy mass, but as they get heat they’ll soften up and start to mix with the other stuff. Just keep stirring them until the mass blends. When it does, turn the heat down, toss in the avocado, cheese, and the pinch of salt, and keep stirring.
The cheese will add some flavor gooeyness to the beans, but should more or less disappear entirely once it gets stirred in. Once the ingredients are fully mixed, you’re pretty much done – you can simmer it for a bit longer, just turn the heat way down so you don’t burn anything. If you go too long, you’ll get a lot of drying on the bottom and a crust on top. Not bad, just not ideal. The whole process, from the time the oil is hot to the time you’re ready to serve, should take about ten minutes. Prep shouldn’t take you more than about ten minutes, either.
Serve on tortilla shells or as taco filling, along with whatever you would normally do in those situations – spinach or lettuce, salsa, extra cheese, chopped tomato, cucumber, cilantro… two quick tips, though.
First, from Yousef – many people would put sour cream on something like this. Try Greek yogurt instead – it is healthier and (in my opinion, after Yousef served it instead of sour cream with fajitas a few weeks ago) at least as tasty, if not more so.
Second, from my mom – it is so odd to me that many people don’t seem to know this trick. I’ve heard a lot of people say that they don’t like making tacos, because the taco shell is always so brittle – the crunch is good but the whole thing just falls apart. What you need to do is this – stuff the taco shells with the filling, be it meat or beans, before they go into the oven. The shells will soften where the filling touches it – so you get a wonderful crispy crunchy outer shell edge, but a soft middle part that doesn’t break into pieces. Also, you can put the cheese on top of the filling, and then it melts in the oven. So delicious.
One of our favorite standards are burritos. I’ll be honest – I’m not exactly going for authenticity here. I doubt the things that I make and call burritos have any relationship to actual burritos – but like the stuff I talked about in the last post, this is an evolved recipe. I started with an idea, and maybe even a recipe – but after a ton of tinkering, what I cook is nothing like what I started with.
I found the last ingredient this week in cumin. I’ve done middle eastern and a lot of Indian stuff… but cumin is used just as commonly in Mexican food. Again, another perfect example of why I started this project. Before I learned about cumin, I used some ground black pepper and red pepper flake. I never had any problem doing things that way – but now that I’ve used cumin instead, I’m unlikely to go back. The cumin was exactly what I needed to give this a little bit of oomph.
This isn’t the kind of thing I’d serve company, but Victoria and I probably wind up eating this once every week or two, because we’re too tired to do any serious cooking.
Quick Refried Beans
1 Onion, small, finely chopped
1/4 – 1/3 pound raw shrimp (51-60 count), peeled and cut into thirds
2 cloves garlic, minced
1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
1 15 ounce can each black beans and vegetarian refried beans
1 half-avocado, cut into small cubes
1 half-handful of yellow cheese – cheddar, Monterey jack, whatever.
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 pinch kosher salt
This recipe is piscetarian – suitable for people who don’t eat red meat or poultry, but do eat fish. If you want to make it vegetarian, or kosher, just remove the shrimp. Luckily for me, my wife thinks that shrimp are vegetables.
Put a small amount of your favorite type of oil in a pot on high heat. Toss in the shrimp, onion, garlic, and cumin, and let that cook for two or three minutes. When the onions look like they’re getting done, throw in the black beans, including about a third of the liquid from the can. When the beans start simmering, which should be fairly soon, throw in the refried beans. They’ll start out as a gloopy mass, but as they get heat they’ll soften up and start to mix with the other stuff. Just keep stirring them until the mass blends. When it does, turn the heat down, toss in the avocado, cheese, and the pinch of salt, and keep stirring.
The cheese will add some flavor gooeyness to the beans, but should more or less disappear entirely once it gets stirred in. Once the ingredients are fully mixed, you’re pretty much done – you can simmer it for a bit longer, just turn the heat way down so you don’t burn anything. If you go too long, you’ll get a lot of drying on the bottom and a crust on top. Not bad, just not ideal. The whole process, from the time the oil is hot to the time you’re ready to serve, should take about ten minutes. Prep shouldn’t take you more than about ten minutes, either.
Serve on tortilla shells or as taco filling, along with whatever you would normally do in those situations – spinach or lettuce, salsa, extra cheese, chopped tomato, cucumber, cilantro… two quick tips, though.
First, from Yousef – many people would put sour cream on something like this. Try Greek yogurt instead – it is healthier and (in my opinion, after Yousef served it instead of sour cream with fajitas a few weeks ago) at least as tasty, if not more so.
Second, from my mom – it is so odd to me that many people don’t seem to know this trick. I’ve heard a lot of people say that they don’t like making tacos, because the taco shell is always so brittle – the crunch is good but the whole thing just falls apart. What you need to do is this – stuff the taco shells with the filling, be it meat or beans, before they go into the oven. The shells will soften where the filling touches it – so you get a wonderful crispy crunchy outer shell edge, but a soft middle part that doesn’t break into pieces. Also, you can put the cheese on top of the filling, and then it melts in the oven. So delicious.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Hummus-Fried Chicken and Mushrooms, Jeera Rice
Convergent evolution. Funny stuff.
I like to cook eggs. Eggs are among the first things I really learned to cook well, and I definitely did it the hard way. (Remind me to tell you the story of the first time I cooked eggs, sometime.) I spent years learning how to make a good omelet - cooking, figuring out what went wrong, refining, practicing the flip, adjusting the batter, adjusting the pan. And when I was done - when I felt like I could make a great omelet every single time, regardless of circumstances, available ingredients (within reason) or anything else, someone pointed something out to me that caught me by surprise.
What I had developed wasn't an omelet at all; it was almost exactly, in fact, like an Italian frittata. Which is, admittedly, just an Italian omelet - but comes out a lot more like a crustless quiche than like a French omelet. Seems like somewhere along the line, someone else had done the same thing that I had, and had refined and perfected until they got something that was not really what they were reaching for at all. Not to be bold, but I think it's a heck of a lot better, to be honest. Actually, that shouldn't be surprising. After all, what I was doing was refining the recipe so that it fit my taste better and better; of course I think the end result tastes awesome.
When I was in Israel, I was sitting around my tiny, tiny kitchen one day thinking about what I might want to eat for dinner. I had half a plate of hummus left, as well as some chicken breasts. Feeling adventurous, I coated the chicken in the leftover hummus (well-mixed with the paprika and olive oil by now - you DID read my last post, right?) and fried it up. It tasted great, and I wound up making it fairly often.
Cut forward a year or two. I'm in law school, and a local diner - Sam's Cafe, a wonderful little greasy spoon on Walnut Street in Champaign, IL - decides to start doing a Lebanese menu on Friday evenings. The owners are both Lebanese, and they've been feeling a bit homesick. As for me, I've been feeling a bit home-away-from-homesick, and since all the good food in Israel is either Lebanese or cooked by one of my aunts, a Lebanese diner sounded right on the money.
It was a small menu - they only had four or five dishes, which is understandable, considering that they were just starting to do the Lebanese thing; I wouldn't want to stock up to do middle eastern cooking in the middle west. In fact, that first evening, there were only about three group that showed up in the entire two hours my friends and I were there. (Gratifyingly, word of mouth spread - less than a month later, the place was packed on Friday evening. Six months after that, it was a normal evening crowd. So that worked out okay.) I ordered a chicken dish I vaguely remembered having before, called Shish Taouk. (To be perfectly honest, what I was really looking forward to was being able to take the hummus, fries, and whatever else I ordered as a main dish, wrap them all up together in a pita, and eat it that way.)
(Shawarma is pretty much the best food in the world. It's kind of like a Greek gyro, in the same way that a Kobe steak is kind of like a Big Mac. You can generally get them one of two ways - stuffed into the pocket of a pita, or in a laffa - a larger piece of flatbread without an empty space in the middle. I desperately miss it.
Seriously - this was something I would eat six or seven times a week in Israel. For four bucks, I could get a full meal - including a ton of vegetables - wrapped in an amazingly delicious piece of bread, and walk down the street eating it.
Man, my next blog should be "the year of eating nothing but shawarma.
I have no idea why it's been so difficult for me to actually talk about cumin this week. I mean, I really like it! It's a delicious spice! I think I made a strategic mistake in cooking hummus first - that mistake being that I forgot how totally nuts I am for middle eastern food.
DAMN I miss shawarma!)
...called Shish Taouk. I knew that I'd had it before, and that I had really liked it, but couldn't remember when. When it finally arrived, I bit into it... And tasted my hummus-fried chicken. Apparently, twice in my life now I've made up on my own, dishes that already have a long history.
The joke was on me, of course, because although they taste similar, Shish Taouk is actually nothing like the chicken dish that I make. They taste similar, and use many of the same flavors, but shish taouk is missing both hummus and tahini, two things that many people might consider fairly important to the whole hummus ambiance.
I have no idea what this story was supposed to be about.
So, anyway - I had some hummus. I had some chicken. I also had some mushrooms. I made some hummus-fried chicken, as well as some hummus-fried portobello.
HUMMUS-FRIED STUFF
Ingredients:
One pound of chicken breasts
Two good-sized portobello caps
One cup of hummus (Recipe in previous post)
One half teaspoon cumin
A pinch of salt and pepper
Lemon juice
Oil - olive or sesame
This is a really simple deal here. First, turn the hummus into a marinade. That involves making it slightly more acidic, and amping up the primary flavors a bit. So, mix in the extra cumin, salt, and pepper, and hit it with the lemon juice. How much? Damned if I know. I've been trying to be better about measuring things, but I totally forgot. Also, I was using squirt-bottle lemon juice rather than fresh lemon juice, so I just kept adding it until it was the consistency I wanted. To put it differently - keep adding lemon juice until the hummus loosens up a bit - you want to be able to smoothly spread it on the chicken, but it shouldn't be runny.
I cooked the chicken breasts whole, but you could also slice or cube the chicken. The mushrooms should be sliced think. Coat everything liberally in the hummus mixture, and let it sit for a half hour or more. (really, for as long as you have the forethought to have given yourself.) (Work through that sentence again, slowly - it'll make sense.) Warm up the oil and toss in the food. (You'll probably have to do it in two batches, if you made all the stuff I listed above.
You want the oil to be medium-high. You're playing a dangerous game here; you need to get it hot enough to turn the hummus into a crust, but if you let it get too hot, the hummus will burn, bind to itself and the pan, and pull right off when you go to remove your food. (Using tongs is a good idea.) If you're cooking chicken breasts, it may be a good idea at this point to go back in time and cube the chicken - it will definitely be easier to control the heat and not overcook things with cubes rather than whole breasts.
Your mileage may vary, depending on the thickness of your cut of chicken, but I find about five minutes, flip, then another five does the job. (You could also start in a frying pan, then switch to the oven - but you'll probably wind up with soggier chicken than you'd prefer.) The mushrooms get basically the exact same treatment, except less time per side - two minutes should do fine.
Serve over rice. In my case, I served it over the following:
JEERA RICE
This is an Indian rice recipe, using cumin seeds. You can find many different variations on it, all over the internet. It's an interesting variant on fried rice; instead of taking already cooked rice and frying it, you take rice that's about 3/4 cooked and fry it for a few minutes to add some flavor before finishing cooking it.
In one pot, start a cup of basmati rice goin'. When it's almost done - soft, but still hard in the middle - drain out the water. Get some oil (or ghee - and sorry if you don't know ghee, I don't know enough about it to explain) cookin', and toss in a small chopped onion. When it gets lonely, throw in two teaspoons of cumin seeds to keep it company. After about two minutes, your nose should be telling you that cumin is delicious - when this happens, dump the rice in and give the whole mixture a minute to get acquainted. Once you feel like the rice has gotten some oil, cumin, and onion all up in its business, rain on the party - a half cup of water, cover, and simmer till the rice is complete. Serve it with the hummus-fried chicken.
Yousef, at this point in the dinner, made a really smart point - you could do some really nice harmonies, with (let's say) coriander rice going under the heavily cumin'd chicken. As it is, the main flavors in the rice and the chicken went smoothly together, which is definitely one way to do things. There are others.
Tomorrow - I've been looking so long at these pictures of cumin that I almost believe that they're real. Also, a quick recipe, the weekly mushroom report, and black cumin.
(He was my favorite cooking-related superhero in the turbulent 70s.)
I like to cook eggs. Eggs are among the first things I really learned to cook well, and I definitely did it the hard way. (Remind me to tell you the story of the first time I cooked eggs, sometime.) I spent years learning how to make a good omelet - cooking, figuring out what went wrong, refining, practicing the flip, adjusting the batter, adjusting the pan. And when I was done - when I felt like I could make a great omelet every single time, regardless of circumstances, available ingredients (within reason) or anything else, someone pointed something out to me that caught me by surprise.
What I had developed wasn't an omelet at all; it was almost exactly, in fact, like an Italian frittata. Which is, admittedly, just an Italian omelet - but comes out a lot more like a crustless quiche than like a French omelet. Seems like somewhere along the line, someone else had done the same thing that I had, and had refined and perfected until they got something that was not really what they were reaching for at all. Not to be bold, but I think it's a heck of a lot better, to be honest. Actually, that shouldn't be surprising. After all, what I was doing was refining the recipe so that it fit my taste better and better; of course I think the end result tastes awesome.
When I was in Israel, I was sitting around my tiny, tiny kitchen one day thinking about what I might want to eat for dinner. I had half a plate of hummus left, as well as some chicken breasts. Feeling adventurous, I coated the chicken in the leftover hummus (well-mixed with the paprika and olive oil by now - you DID read my last post, right?) and fried it up. It tasted great, and I wound up making it fairly often.
Cut forward a year or two. I'm in law school, and a local diner - Sam's Cafe, a wonderful little greasy spoon on Walnut Street in Champaign, IL - decides to start doing a Lebanese menu on Friday evenings. The owners are both Lebanese, and they've been feeling a bit homesick. As for me, I've been feeling a bit home-away-from-homesick, and since all the good food in Israel is either Lebanese or cooked by one of my aunts, a Lebanese diner sounded right on the money.
It was a small menu - they only had four or five dishes, which is understandable, considering that they were just starting to do the Lebanese thing; I wouldn't want to stock up to do middle eastern cooking in the middle west. In fact, that first evening, there were only about three group that showed up in the entire two hours my friends and I were there. (Gratifyingly, word of mouth spread - less than a month later, the place was packed on Friday evening. Six months after that, it was a normal evening crowd. So that worked out okay.) I ordered a chicken dish I vaguely remembered having before, called Shish Taouk. (To be perfectly honest, what I was really looking forward to was being able to take the hummus, fries, and whatever else I ordered as a main dish, wrap them all up together in a pita, and eat it that way.)
(Shawarma is pretty much the best food in the world. It's kind of like a Greek gyro, in the same way that a Kobe steak is kind of like a Big Mac. You can generally get them one of two ways - stuffed into the pocket of a pita, or in a laffa - a larger piece of flatbread without an empty space in the middle. I desperately miss it.
Seriously - this was something I would eat six or seven times a week in Israel. For four bucks, I could get a full meal - including a ton of vegetables - wrapped in an amazingly delicious piece of bread, and walk down the street eating it.
Man, my next blog should be "the year of eating nothing but shawarma.
I have no idea why it's been so difficult for me to actually talk about cumin this week. I mean, I really like it! It's a delicious spice! I think I made a strategic mistake in cooking hummus first - that mistake being that I forgot how totally nuts I am for middle eastern food.
DAMN I miss shawarma!)
...called Shish Taouk. I knew that I'd had it before, and that I had really liked it, but couldn't remember when. When it finally arrived, I bit into it... And tasted my hummus-fried chicken. Apparently, twice in my life now I've made up on my own, dishes that already have a long history.
The joke was on me, of course, because although they taste similar, Shish Taouk is actually nothing like the chicken dish that I make. They taste similar, and use many of the same flavors, but shish taouk is missing both hummus and tahini, two things that many people might consider fairly important to the whole hummus ambiance.
I have no idea what this story was supposed to be about.
So, anyway - I had some hummus. I had some chicken. I also had some mushrooms. I made some hummus-fried chicken, as well as some hummus-fried portobello.
HUMMUS-FRIED STUFF
Ingredients:
One pound of chicken breasts
Two good-sized portobello caps
One cup of hummus (Recipe in previous post)
One half teaspoon cumin
A pinch of salt and pepper
Lemon juice
Oil - olive or sesame
This is a really simple deal here. First, turn the hummus into a marinade. That involves making it slightly more acidic, and amping up the primary flavors a bit. So, mix in the extra cumin, salt, and pepper, and hit it with the lemon juice. How much? Damned if I know. I've been trying to be better about measuring things, but I totally forgot. Also, I was using squirt-bottle lemon juice rather than fresh lemon juice, so I just kept adding it until it was the consistency I wanted. To put it differently - keep adding lemon juice until the hummus loosens up a bit - you want to be able to smoothly spread it on the chicken, but it shouldn't be runny.
I cooked the chicken breasts whole, but you could also slice or cube the chicken. The mushrooms should be sliced think. Coat everything liberally in the hummus mixture, and let it sit for a half hour or more. (really, for as long as you have the forethought to have given yourself.) (Work through that sentence again, slowly - it'll make sense.) Warm up the oil and toss in the food. (You'll probably have to do it in two batches, if you made all the stuff I listed above.
You want the oil to be medium-high. You're playing a dangerous game here; you need to get it hot enough to turn the hummus into a crust, but if you let it get too hot, the hummus will burn, bind to itself and the pan, and pull right off when you go to remove your food. (Using tongs is a good idea.) If you're cooking chicken breasts, it may be a good idea at this point to go back in time and cube the chicken - it will definitely be easier to control the heat and not overcook things with cubes rather than whole breasts.
Your mileage may vary, depending on the thickness of your cut of chicken, but I find about five minutes, flip, then another five does the job. (You could also start in a frying pan, then switch to the oven - but you'll probably wind up with soggier chicken than you'd prefer.) The mushrooms get basically the exact same treatment, except less time per side - two minutes should do fine.
Serve over rice. In my case, I served it over the following:
JEERA RICE
This is an Indian rice recipe, using cumin seeds. You can find many different variations on it, all over the internet. It's an interesting variant on fried rice; instead of taking already cooked rice and frying it, you take rice that's about 3/4 cooked and fry it for a few minutes to add some flavor before finishing cooking it.
In one pot, start a cup of basmati rice goin'. When it's almost done - soft, but still hard in the middle - drain out the water. Get some oil (or ghee - and sorry if you don't know ghee, I don't know enough about it to explain) cookin', and toss in a small chopped onion. When it gets lonely, throw in two teaspoons of cumin seeds to keep it company. After about two minutes, your nose should be telling you that cumin is delicious - when this happens, dump the rice in and give the whole mixture a minute to get acquainted. Once you feel like the rice has gotten some oil, cumin, and onion all up in its business, rain on the party - a half cup of water, cover, and simmer till the rice is complete. Serve it with the hummus-fried chicken.
Yousef, at this point in the dinner, made a really smart point - you could do some really nice harmonies, with (let's say) coriander rice going under the heavily cumin'd chicken. As it is, the main flavors in the rice and the chicken went smoothly together, which is definitely one way to do things. There are others.
Tomorrow - I've been looking so long at these pictures of cumin that I almost believe that they're real. Also, a quick recipe, the weekly mushroom report, and black cumin.
(He was my favorite cooking-related superhero in the turbulent 70s.)
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Five Digressions on Hummus (#s 3-5)
Here are the remaining three parts of my post about hummus. Cumin is actually mentioned in this one.
I’m going to come clean - I am a total hummus snob. It makes it hard to talk about the food with any objectivity.
The thing is, in Israel, hummus is an obsession – more popular, I am told, than in Lebanon, where it originated. It has been suggested that this is because when Jewish settlers first came to Israel, they were eager to embrace their new home, including its food. My Israeli cousins are a perfect example.
I have a large family in Israel which emigrated from the republic of Georgia in the early 70s. My cousins are split down the middle – some of them are Israeli, some of them are Georgian. This has nothing to do with age or place of birth; the two oldest, Yossi and David, are both very Israeli, while the youngest, my cousin Leah, is far more Georgian. Admittedly, this is a small sample set – seven data points – but in my experience hummus consumption tracks strongly with Israeli identification. I’m not saying that some of my cousins don’t consider themselves Israeli – I’m just saying that some of them act more like Israelis, some more like Georgians. This is made more complicated by the fact that, as a country, Israel is barely sixty years old… what does it even mean to be Israeli when almost everyone is an immigrant? Our grandfather – my father’s father – was born in Israel, before his family returned to their native Georgia. A grandfather born in Israel – if there were an Israeli DAR, I would be in it. My point is, I come by hummus snobbery, if not honestly, at least arguably morally.
Snobbery. Sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it’s not. It’s worth being a wine snob; there's just not enough difference for it to be worth being a gin snob. (Although I’m sure that there are gin people out there who are gasping in horror right now.)[1] It’s worth being a bagel snob – there is nothing I hate more in life than biting into what was advertised as a bagel but in fact turns out to merely be toroidal bread. On the other hand, Yousef recently bought a bunch of “high-end” milk from a frou-frou local creamery; nobody really felt like there was a significant difference, and some people liked the regular milk better. So what's the point? Why be a milk snob?
Hummus? Dear lord. The best hummus is sublime. The worst hummus tastes like chickpea dog food. This mostly happens when you buy store-bought hummus in the US. Athenos – I’m looking at you. Tribe of Two Sheiks is edible, but not particularly good. Sabra is the only major brand that I’ve ever felt was decent, but you pay quite a premium for it. (Sabra also sells prepackaged hummus in Israel – it’s both tastier and cheaper over there.)
If you want top-quality hummus, what you’re looking for is a restaurant run by a slightly older, slightly plump Lebanese or Turkish lady. The thicker the accent the better. Even better, a grocery store that makes its own hummus – but again, ownership is critical. If you don’t see that Lebanese lady – past her prime, but still quite handsome – behind the counter, reconsider your situation. If instead there is a hippy behind the counter? RUN. HIPPIES MAKE SHITTY HUMMUS. I’m sure there are exceptions – my friend Meg is a great cook, and I know she makes hummus – but I stand by that rule. It will get under-blended, because they think chickpea chunks are more "authentic", and you just know they're gonna put patchouli oil or some shit like that in it.
DO NOT LET HIPPIES MAKE YOUR HUMMUS.
What foods are you snobby about?
Victoria told me that her friend Mog had a great recipe for hummus with cumin in it. That sounded great – just like what I wanted to make. Only three problems. Mog wasn’t available, Victoria didn’t have the recipe, and every time I’ve tried to make hummus on my own it’s come out as the previously-mentioned chickpea dog food.
I think I should subtitle this blog Telling you how to cook then doing the exact opposite. Two days after I write up a post about not sweating recipes, I spend half a week following recipes exactly; a few days ago I wrote about how useless cookbooks are. So what was the first thing I did when I wanted some hummus? I whipped out my Syrian and Lebanese cookbook.
Oh, by the way, this is the picture from the back of the cookbook:
That is just about the youngest and thinnest a hypothetical Lebanese lady should be in order for you to trust her to make hummus.
Unfortunately, the recipe in the cookbook didn’t really do it for me. I mean, it sounded great – but it used dried chickpeas, which take forever to cook, and it used pomegranate seeds, which are absolutely delicious but which I didn’t have. So, I went with plan A – I looked up a few additional recipes, and wung it.
Cumin Hummus
2 Cans (15 oz) Chickpeas (Hummus, Chickpeas, Garbanzo Beans – all the same thing)
½ Cup… Okay, Let’s Call It Tahini, Because That’s What It’ll Be Called In The Store
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 ½ Tsp. Salt
Pepper (Some)
1.5 Tbsp Cumin
Garlic (As Much As You Can Stand, That Stuff Is Good)
Juice of One Half Lemon
Open the cans, and drain most of the liquid from them. Pour them, the garlic, tahini, olive oil, and lemon juice into a blender. Blend until mostly smooth. Add in the salt, pepper, and cumin. Blend until seriously just barely not smooth yet. Taste – if delicious, finish blending and serve. If not quite there, add garlic, salt, pepper, lemon, cumin, or any combination until you are satisfied.
I used two teaspoons of cumin, and to be honest, it was probably too much. I liked it a lot, but several people reported it as at the far edge of their spiciness tolerance – any more and it would cease to be enjoyable. So, for this recipe, I dialed it back a bit. Also, I used some water to loosen things up – but why use water when the cans of chick peas already have liquid? If you feel that your hummus is a bit thick, you can always add a bit of water to loosen it up a bit, but it’s a lot harder to go in the other direction, so err on the side of less water.
This is how hummus should look when it is served:
Unless you’ve got some damn good reason for it, there is no excuse for your hummus not to look like this. This is, objectively, the right way to do things. It doesn’t matter where you got your hummus; from a restaurant, from a store, from a Turkish grandma who runs a shady back-alley hummus operation. When you get it home, before you eat it, and certainly before you serve it to other human beings, you do the following things:
1: Get out a big spoon and a plate. Spoon the appropriate amount of hummus into a pile in the center of the plate, then smooth it flat using circular motions. When you’re just about done, push a bit harder in the center of the plate (while still moving your spoon in circles) to make a dent in the center of the hummus.
2. Take some paprika and dust the hummus to taste. Note – I’m giving you some leeway here. Don’t abuse it. In either direction.
3. Pour some olive oil into the well in the center. Pour carefully – you want a glistening golden yolk to your middle eastern egg, not a runny oily mess all over your hummus. If you didn’t make your dent properly, the oil will spread out everywhere. Throw it out. Throw it all out. Just toss the plate in the garbage. The spoon, too. You don’t deserve hummus. This is why she left you.
4. Assuming you are not weeping on the floor over the ruin you have made of your life, you’re done! Feel free to garnish with parsley, olives, or pickles (the tiny Mediterranean variety.) Chances are you’re now about to ruin a perfect hummus plate with absolutely terrible pita, but that’s not your fault. You can’t get good pita in this country for love or money. Trust me, I’ve tried both.
Okay, I just looked at that picture again… I was a bit wrong. Apparently, Victoria didn’t get to the camera before I got to the pita... so that is what a plate of hummus should look, after some inconsiderate asshole has taken a piece of pita and swiped it straight through the middle spilling olive oil all over the place and ruining the visual.
Tomorrow – I’ve got all this hummus! I’m going to make one of my favorite dishes – hummus-fried chicken.
[1] I'm also not saying that there's no difference between a $10 bottle of gin and a $30 bottle of gin. I'm sure there is. You know what? Let me switch to vodka, a drink where I'm on better grounds. A $10 bottle of vodka tastes like absolute shit. It burns your mouth and throat (and not in a good way, either) and gives you a headache. But once you get to the "decent vodka" level... look, I am a vodka snob. I have a stated preference for Stolichnaya (the black labeled one) over Grey Goose, or Level 1, or any of the other premium vodkas I've tasted. I have, in fact, turned up my nose at other premium vodkas over my preferred brand. That's stupid snobbery right there. Sure, I prefer one, but let's be honest. They're all either [delicious] or [paint-thinner] depending on whether or not you like vodka. Not worth snobbery.
Scotch, on the other hand? My word. Just at the $30 price point, you have scotches as different as Laphroaig and Glennfiddich. While they're both fine drinks, it's entirely possible to love one and hate the other, and if you're not at least a little snobby, you're not going to know the difference until you get a mouthful of the Laphroaig, do a spit-take, and say "My god! Did the distillery burn down while they were making that scotch?"
By the way, while I'm writing this, I'm drinking a lovely 12-year called Driftwood which my wife bought for me on the recommendation of the excellent staff of the local liquor store. Shout-out to Schneider's of Capitol Hill.
SNOBBERY
The thing is, in Israel, hummus is an obsession – more popular, I am told, than in Lebanon, where it originated. It has been suggested that this is because when Jewish settlers first came to Israel, they were eager to embrace their new home, including its food. My Israeli cousins are a perfect example.
I have a large family in Israel which emigrated from the republic of Georgia in the early 70s. My cousins are split down the middle – some of them are Israeli, some of them are Georgian. This has nothing to do with age or place of birth; the two oldest, Yossi and David, are both very Israeli, while the youngest, my cousin Leah, is far more Georgian. Admittedly, this is a small sample set – seven data points – but in my experience hummus consumption tracks strongly with Israeli identification. I’m not saying that some of my cousins don’t consider themselves Israeli – I’m just saying that some of them act more like Israelis, some more like Georgians. This is made more complicated by the fact that, as a country, Israel is barely sixty years old… what does it even mean to be Israeli when almost everyone is an immigrant? Our grandfather – my father’s father – was born in Israel, before his family returned to their native Georgia. A grandfather born in Israel – if there were an Israeli DAR, I would be in it. My point is, I come by hummus snobbery, if not honestly, at least arguably morally.
Snobbery. Sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it’s not. It’s worth being a wine snob; there's just not enough difference for it to be worth being a gin snob. (Although I’m sure that there are gin people out there who are gasping in horror right now.)[1] It’s worth being a bagel snob – there is nothing I hate more in life than biting into what was advertised as a bagel but in fact turns out to merely be toroidal bread. On the other hand, Yousef recently bought a bunch of “high-end” milk from a frou-frou local creamery; nobody really felt like there was a significant difference, and some people liked the regular milk better. So what's the point? Why be a milk snob?
Hummus? Dear lord. The best hummus is sublime. The worst hummus tastes like chickpea dog food. This mostly happens when you buy store-bought hummus in the US. Athenos – I’m looking at you. Tribe of Two Sheiks is edible, but not particularly good. Sabra is the only major brand that I’ve ever felt was decent, but you pay quite a premium for it. (Sabra also sells prepackaged hummus in Israel – it’s both tastier and cheaper over there.)
If you want top-quality hummus, what you’re looking for is a restaurant run by a slightly older, slightly plump Lebanese or Turkish lady. The thicker the accent the better. Even better, a grocery store that makes its own hummus – but again, ownership is critical. If you don’t see that Lebanese lady – past her prime, but still quite handsome – behind the counter, reconsider your situation. If instead there is a hippy behind the counter? RUN. HIPPIES MAKE SHITTY HUMMUS. I’m sure there are exceptions – my friend Meg is a great cook, and I know she makes hummus – but I stand by that rule. It will get under-blended, because they think chickpea chunks are more "authentic", and you just know they're gonna put patchouli oil or some shit like that in it.
DO NOT LET HIPPIES MAKE YOUR HUMMUS.
What foods are you snobby about?
RECIPE
Victoria told me that her friend Mog had a great recipe for hummus with cumin in it. That sounded great – just like what I wanted to make. Only three problems. Mog wasn’t available, Victoria didn’t have the recipe, and every time I’ve tried to make hummus on my own it’s come out as the previously-mentioned chickpea dog food.
I think I should subtitle this blog Telling you how to cook then doing the exact opposite. Two days after I write up a post about not sweating recipes, I spend half a week following recipes exactly; a few days ago I wrote about how useless cookbooks are. So what was the first thing I did when I wanted some hummus? I whipped out my Syrian and Lebanese cookbook.
Oh, by the way, this is the picture from the back of the cookbook:
That is just about the youngest and thinnest a hypothetical Lebanese lady should be in order for you to trust her to make hummus.
Unfortunately, the recipe in the cookbook didn’t really do it for me. I mean, it sounded great – but it used dried chickpeas, which take forever to cook, and it used pomegranate seeds, which are absolutely delicious but which I didn’t have. So, I went with plan A – I looked up a few additional recipes, and wung it.
Cumin Hummus
2 Cans (15 oz) Chickpeas (Hummus, Chickpeas, Garbanzo Beans – all the same thing)
½ Cup… Okay, Let’s Call It Tahini, Because That’s What It’ll Be Called In The Store
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 ½ Tsp. Salt
Pepper (Some)
1.5 Tbsp Cumin
Garlic (As Much As You Can Stand, That Stuff Is Good)
Juice of One Half Lemon
Open the cans, and drain most of the liquid from them. Pour them, the garlic, tahini, olive oil, and lemon juice into a blender. Blend until mostly smooth. Add in the salt, pepper, and cumin. Blend until seriously just barely not smooth yet. Taste – if delicious, finish blending and serve. If not quite there, add garlic, salt, pepper, lemon, cumin, or any combination until you are satisfied.
I used two teaspoons of cumin, and to be honest, it was probably too much. I liked it a lot, but several people reported it as at the far edge of their spiciness tolerance – any more and it would cease to be enjoyable. So, for this recipe, I dialed it back a bit. Also, I used some water to loosen things up – but why use water when the cans of chick peas already have liquid? If you feel that your hummus is a bit thick, you can always add a bit of water to loosen it up a bit, but it’s a lot harder to go in the other direction, so err on the side of less water.
PLATING
This is how hummus should look when it is served:
Look - you can see the dried bits from the previous plate, which I ate before Victoria could get the camera.
That, maybe your hummus shouldn't look like so much.
Unless you’ve got some damn good reason for it, there is no excuse for your hummus not to look like this. This is, objectively, the right way to do things. It doesn’t matter where you got your hummus; from a restaurant, from a store, from a Turkish grandma who runs a shady back-alley hummus operation. When you get it home, before you eat it, and certainly before you serve it to other human beings, you do the following things:
1: Get out a big spoon and a plate. Spoon the appropriate amount of hummus into a pile in the center of the plate, then smooth it flat using circular motions. When you’re just about done, push a bit harder in the center of the plate (while still moving your spoon in circles) to make a dent in the center of the hummus.
2. Take some paprika and dust the hummus to taste. Note – I’m giving you some leeway here. Don’t abuse it. In either direction.
3. Pour some olive oil into the well in the center. Pour carefully – you want a glistening golden yolk to your middle eastern egg, not a runny oily mess all over your hummus. If you didn’t make your dent properly, the oil will spread out everywhere. Throw it out. Throw it all out. Just toss the plate in the garbage. The spoon, too. You don’t deserve hummus. This is why she left you.
4. Assuming you are not weeping on the floor over the ruin you have made of your life, you’re done! Feel free to garnish with parsley, olives, or pickles (the tiny Mediterranean variety.) Chances are you’re now about to ruin a perfect hummus plate with absolutely terrible pita, but that’s not your fault. You can’t get good pita in this country for love or money. Trust me, I’ve tried both.
Okay, I just looked at that picture again… I was a bit wrong. Apparently, Victoria didn’t get to the camera before I got to the pita... so that is what a plate of hummus should look, after some inconsiderate asshole has taken a piece of pita and swiped it straight through the middle spilling olive oil all over the place and ruining the visual.
Tomorrow – I’ve got all this hummus! I’m going to make one of my favorite dishes – hummus-fried chicken.
[1] I'm also not saying that there's no difference between a $10 bottle of gin and a $30 bottle of gin. I'm sure there is. You know what? Let me switch to vodka, a drink where I'm on better grounds. A $10 bottle of vodka tastes like absolute shit. It burns your mouth and throat (and not in a good way, either) and gives you a headache. But once you get to the "decent vodka" level... look, I am a vodka snob. I have a stated preference for Stolichnaya (the black labeled one) over Grey Goose, or Level 1, or any of the other premium vodkas I've tasted. I have, in fact, turned up my nose at other premium vodkas over my preferred brand. That's stupid snobbery right there. Sure, I prefer one, but let's be honest. They're all either [delicious] or [paint-thinner] depending on whether or not you like vodka. Not worth snobbery.
Scotch, on the other hand? My word. Just at the $30 price point, you have scotches as different as Laphroaig and Glennfiddich. While they're both fine drinks, it's entirely possible to love one and hate the other, and if you're not at least a little snobby, you're not going to know the difference until you get a mouthful of the Laphroaig, do a spit-take, and say "My god! Did the distillery burn down while they were making that scotch?"
By the way, while I'm writing this, I'm drinking a lovely 12-year called Driftwood which my wife bought for me on the recommendation of the excellent staff of the local liquor store. Shout-out to Schneider's of Capitol Hill.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Week 3 is icumin in
The title to this post is a punne, or a play on words. It takes advantage of the fact that the first line of a traditional English ballad, in Middle English, starts out with the line "Sumer is icumin in", or "Summer is a-comin' in". However, the word icumin looks and sounds a lot like the spice that I'm working on for Week Three - cumin. Hence the joke. Funny, no?
I haven't magically solved my description problems in the last few weeks. Cumin, like turmeric, is delicious and complex. At least it's not earthy.I'm going to give it my best.
Cumin is mildly spicy – enough so’s you’d notice, not enough to send anyone running to stick their head in the water butt. It’s a little bit bitter, a little bit sweet. A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll…
Actually, I like the music analogy that I used in the final Turmeric entry better than I like having to try to describe the taste itself. My vocabulary about music isn't exactly master-level, but it’s a whole hell of a lot more developed than my vocabulary about tastes and smells. I really have no idea which is more helpful - the description above, or the one below.
I’ve really enjoyed getting to learn to cook with cumin. If turmeric is the bass, cumin is the lead guitar. You’re always going to be hearing it – it never fades totally into the background, the way a bass can. It can be a solid, dependable rhythm, content to be support while someone else is showing off. But like a guitar, what cumin really wants to do is wail. Give it half a chance, and cumin is doing a power solo on everyone’s taste buds. Sometimes that’s exactly what you want – to let the whole arena fall into a hushed silence while cumin just shreds.
It blends perfectly well with other spices, if you’re careful to keep all that power on a leash – and that’s not always easy. You can’t leash a tiger, baby!
A Brief Digression on Pronunciation:
I’ve been pronouncing the name of this spice as COO-min all week. People have been correcting me to Q-min all week. So, I decided to look it up… and the authorities are mixed, to say the least. Any of the following seems to be equally valid, with none particularly favored by dictionary sites:
(I checked Dictionary.com, which is based on American Heritage and Webster’s, and Merriam Webster online. The OED, really the only dictionary that counts, does not make an online edition available for free, and I’m not somewhere I have access to one.) Among non-dictionary sources – IE, various forum threads where someone asks “hey, how do you pronounce cumin?” - Q-min seems to be the most favored, followed closely by coo-min with come-in as a distant third. Historically, it’s a fairly slutty word – it’s an English word, sure, but before that it went from Arabic to Greek to Latin to Spanish then again to Arabic, back to Spanish then French and finally English. That’s without even unsealing its juvenile record, which supposedly goes all the way back to Sumerian. So, depending on various little foibles of your own particular branch of English, any of the three is probably equally valid.
However you pronounce it, Cumin is an incredibly popular spice. Various unsourced statements on Internet claim that it’s the second most popular spice in the world. (Behind pepper, of course; remember, salt is not technically a spice.) I don’t know about that, but its morals are just as loose culinarily as they are linguistically. It shows up in the foods of western Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Central and South America, as well as in Mexican and Tex-Mex. The French use it in some breads, in South Asia it shows up in teas, and the Dutch put it not only in cheese but in liqueurs as well.
In general, there is only one choice you’re going to have to make when dealing with cumin – do you buy it whole, or do you buy it preground? There are two main reasons for that. First, while there are three types of cumin sold – amber, white, and black – amber and white are not particularly different, and black cumin isn’t really cumin, but a different type of plant entirely. There are some geographic differences between various types of cumin – we use Indian cumin almost exclusively in this country. I am led to believe that the other form of cumin does have a highly distinctive taste and much higher oil content. I would be happy to try out the differences for myself… but unfortunately, the world’s other leading cumin center happens to be Iran, a country that the US doesn’t do a whole lot of trade with.
We haven’t talked a whole lot about spice purchasing and storage, thus far, partly because I’ve been racing to keep up with the blog and partly because the subject just hasn’t come up. However, now is a great time to start having that conversation. If you go all the way back here you’ll find that the definition of a spice is some non-leafy part of a plant that contains volatile, flavorful essential oils. In the case of cumin, that non-leafy part is the berry of a parsley-like plant. (People generally refer to whole cumin berries as cumin seeds, which is not technically correct, but they look at you funny when you point out that they’re technically wrong. Ingrates.)
For now, I’m going to focus on one word out of the phrase “Volatile, flavorful essential oils” – volatile. In all spices, by definition, the oils bearing the flavor and aroma of the plant has a tendency to vaporize. Poof. Which means what you’re left with, after a fairly short amount of time, is a bunch of powder that doesn’t really add much at all to a dish. I’m sure all of us have that jar of cinnamon that has been sitting in the back of the cabinet since 1994 and pretty much tastes like sawdust by now. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. The rule of thumb is that whole (unground) spices have an ideal shelf life of about two years, and ground spices about six months.
This leads us to two conclusions. First, it is better to buy spices in smaller quantities; second, that it’s better to buy spices whole. Until I started this project, I was always a big fan of buying spices in bulk – it’s cheaper, and it means I have to go to the supermarket less frequently. The problem is, of course, by the time you get to the bottom of that pound of cinnamon, you’re just adding sawdust to your oatmeal. It’s worth the time and effort to find a local spice market and buy your spices by the ounce – or, to do so over the internet. You gain two things – first, control over how much you’re buying and second, a better idea of how fresh everything is.
Now, this leads to problems of its own – storage, as well as extra effort. The amount of effort you want to put in to getting high-quality ingredients is up to you; I mean, let’s be honest here. We’re not talking about the difference between an awful dish and an amazing one; we’re talking about a minor difference. Sure, stale cumin may taste terrible compared to fresh cumin, but once that teaspoon of cumin is spread out among a dish that serves four, we’re talking about a difference between pretty good and great, not bad and great. Now, if you’re talking about a dish that really includes only one spice, or a spice that you’re adding directly into something, freshness may well be the difference between bad and good. If you’ve got a specialty spice merchant that’s easy for you to get to – or at least easy enough to visit once every few months – I highly suggest buying there, rather than the supermarket. If that’s not the case, most people get along fine buying McCormick’s spices.
As far as storage goes, that’s something I intend to talk about at length at a later date.
Back to the second conclusion - that it’s better to buy whole spices than it is to buy ground. They last longer – hopefully the reason why is obvious – and many whole spices have uses of their own; for example, whole cumin seeds are an ingredient in many dishes. And, of course, you can grind most whole spices yourself. (This doesn’t apply to everything – plenty of spices need to be dried and powdered rather than merely ground; onion, garlic, ginger, and turmeric off the top of my head aren’t really something you turn from the whole form to the ground form on your own.) Alton’s suggestion is to keep a small coffee grinder handy to use on spices; Victoria and I own a mortar and pestle, which we occasionally use, but most of the time the coffee grinder produces better results, faster, and with much less effort on our part.
So, ideally, we’re going to work with cumin seeds (berries) that were picked sometime within the last two years, and grind them as necessary. Nota bene - cumin seeds should ideally be roasted before they’re ground to reach full potency. Before you shove them in the coffee grinder, warm up a frying pan to medium heat, and give the cumin seeds 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly. You’ll know when they’re ready because the color darkens and an aroma of cumin wafts. Let them cool down, and only then grind them. NOW we’ve got perfect freshly-ground cumin. (Again – it’s not that you’re going to get crappy, terrible cumin and ruin your food if you just chuck it into the grinder… but it’ll be better if you go through the extra effort. Cook up whatever you think you’ll need for the next three months or so at once, then store the rest.)
Any questions? If not, join me next time, as we make some really, really delicious hummus.
I haven't magically solved my description problems in the last few weeks. Cumin, like turmeric, is delicious and complex. At least it's not earthy.I'm going to give it my best.
Cumin is mildly spicy – enough so’s you’d notice, not enough to send anyone running to stick their head in the water butt. It’s a little bit bitter, a little bit sweet. A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll…
Actually, I like the music analogy that I used in the final Turmeric entry better than I like having to try to describe the taste itself. My vocabulary about music isn't exactly master-level, but it’s a whole hell of a lot more developed than my vocabulary about tastes and smells. I really have no idea which is more helpful - the description above, or the one below.
I’ve really enjoyed getting to learn to cook with cumin. If turmeric is the bass, cumin is the lead guitar. You’re always going to be hearing it – it never fades totally into the background, the way a bass can. It can be a solid, dependable rhythm, content to be support while someone else is showing off. But like a guitar, what cumin really wants to do is wail. Give it half a chance, and cumin is doing a power solo on everyone’s taste buds. Sometimes that’s exactly what you want – to let the whole arena fall into a hushed silence while cumin just shreds.
It blends perfectly well with other spices, if you’re careful to keep all that power on a leash – and that’s not always easy. You can’t leash a tiger, baby!
A Brief Digression on Pronunciation:
I’ve been pronouncing the name of this spice as COO-min all week. People have been correcting me to Q-min all week. So, I decided to look it up… and the authorities are mixed, to say the least. Any of the following seems to be equally valid, with none particularly favored by dictionary sites:
COME-in
Q-min
COO-min
(I checked Dictionary.com, which is based on American Heritage and Webster’s, and Merriam Webster online. The OED, really the only dictionary that counts, does not make an online edition available for free, and I’m not somewhere I have access to one.) Among non-dictionary sources – IE, various forum threads where someone asks “hey, how do you pronounce cumin?” - Q-min seems to be the most favored, followed closely by coo-min with come-in as a distant third. Historically, it’s a fairly slutty word – it’s an English word, sure, but before that it went from Arabic to Greek to Latin to Spanish then again to Arabic, back to Spanish then French and finally English. That’s without even unsealing its juvenile record, which supposedly goes all the way back to Sumerian. So, depending on various little foibles of your own particular branch of English, any of the three is probably equally valid.
However you pronounce it, Cumin is an incredibly popular spice. Various unsourced statements on Internet claim that it’s the second most popular spice in the world. (Behind pepper, of course; remember, salt is not technically a spice.) I don’t know about that, but its morals are just as loose culinarily as they are linguistically. It shows up in the foods of western Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Central and South America, as well as in Mexican and Tex-Mex. The French use it in some breads, in South Asia it shows up in teas, and the Dutch put it not only in cheese but in liqueurs as well.
In general, there is only one choice you’re going to have to make when dealing with cumin – do you buy it whole, or do you buy it preground? There are two main reasons for that. First, while there are three types of cumin sold – amber, white, and black – amber and white are not particularly different, and black cumin isn’t really cumin, but a different type of plant entirely. There are some geographic differences between various types of cumin – we use Indian cumin almost exclusively in this country. I am led to believe that the other form of cumin does have a highly distinctive taste and much higher oil content. I would be happy to try out the differences for myself… but unfortunately, the world’s other leading cumin center happens to be Iran, a country that the US doesn’t do a whole lot of trade with.
We haven’t talked a whole lot about spice purchasing and storage, thus far, partly because I’ve been racing to keep up with the blog and partly because the subject just hasn’t come up. However, now is a great time to start having that conversation. If you go all the way back here you’ll find that the definition of a spice is some non-leafy part of a plant that contains volatile, flavorful essential oils. In the case of cumin, that non-leafy part is the berry of a parsley-like plant. (People generally refer to whole cumin berries as cumin seeds, which is not technically correct, but they look at you funny when you point out that they’re technically wrong. Ingrates.)
For now, I’m going to focus on one word out of the phrase “Volatile, flavorful essential oils” – volatile. In all spices, by definition, the oils bearing the flavor and aroma of the plant has a tendency to vaporize. Poof. Which means what you’re left with, after a fairly short amount of time, is a bunch of powder that doesn’t really add much at all to a dish. I’m sure all of us have that jar of cinnamon that has been sitting in the back of the cabinet since 1994 and pretty much tastes like sawdust by now. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. The rule of thumb is that whole (unground) spices have an ideal shelf life of about two years, and ground spices about six months.
This leads us to two conclusions. First, it is better to buy spices in smaller quantities; second, that it’s better to buy spices whole. Until I started this project, I was always a big fan of buying spices in bulk – it’s cheaper, and it means I have to go to the supermarket less frequently. The problem is, of course, by the time you get to the bottom of that pound of cinnamon, you’re just adding sawdust to your oatmeal. It’s worth the time and effort to find a local spice market and buy your spices by the ounce – or, to do so over the internet. You gain two things – first, control over how much you’re buying and second, a better idea of how fresh everything is.
Now, this leads to problems of its own – storage, as well as extra effort. The amount of effort you want to put in to getting high-quality ingredients is up to you; I mean, let’s be honest here. We’re not talking about the difference between an awful dish and an amazing one; we’re talking about a minor difference. Sure, stale cumin may taste terrible compared to fresh cumin, but once that teaspoon of cumin is spread out among a dish that serves four, we’re talking about a difference between pretty good and great, not bad and great. Now, if you’re talking about a dish that really includes only one spice, or a spice that you’re adding directly into something, freshness may well be the difference between bad and good. If you’ve got a specialty spice merchant that’s easy for you to get to – or at least easy enough to visit once every few months – I highly suggest buying there, rather than the supermarket. If that’s not the case, most people get along fine buying McCormick’s spices.
As far as storage goes, that’s something I intend to talk about at length at a later date.
Back to the second conclusion - that it’s better to buy whole spices than it is to buy ground. They last longer – hopefully the reason why is obvious – and many whole spices have uses of their own; for example, whole cumin seeds are an ingredient in many dishes. And, of course, you can grind most whole spices yourself. (This doesn’t apply to everything – plenty of spices need to be dried and powdered rather than merely ground; onion, garlic, ginger, and turmeric off the top of my head aren’t really something you turn from the whole form to the ground form on your own.) Alton’s suggestion is to keep a small coffee grinder handy to use on spices; Victoria and I own a mortar and pestle, which we occasionally use, but most of the time the coffee grinder produces better results, faster, and with much less effort on our part.
So, ideally, we’re going to work with cumin seeds (berries) that were picked sometime within the last two years, and grind them as necessary. Nota bene - cumin seeds should ideally be roasted before they’re ground to reach full potency. Before you shove them in the coffee grinder, warm up a frying pan to medium heat, and give the cumin seeds 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly. You’ll know when they’re ready because the color darkens and an aroma of cumin wafts. Let them cool down, and only then grind them. NOW we’ve got perfect freshly-ground cumin. (Again – it’s not that you’re going to get crappy, terrible cumin and ruin your food if you just chuck it into the grinder… but it’ll be better if you go through the extra effort. Cook up whatever you think you’ll need for the next three months or so at once, then store the rest.)
Any questions? If not, join me next time, as we make some really, really delicious hummus.
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