cardamom – Mado Food

Cardamom Biscotti

Sometimes it just has to go cardamom in my kitchen. I start dreaming about flavour swaps and find my hands magically clutching a baggie of army-green pods from that crazy mishmash called my spice drawer. I hold the bag and … sigh.

No, I start cussing, wondering aloud if I have the cooking mojo in me to ferret out their cache. Will my cold, stiff fingers find the fortitude to single out each and every one of these tiny seeds that bear an uncanny resemblance to mouse turds?

Cardamom pods aren’t like those happy, smiling pistachio nuts, each cracked and cooperative. These babies are sealed shut like an exotic, perfumed temptress.

Thus, they bring out the pounder in me.

I’ve tried crushing them under my chef’s knife like garlic cloves – but lo, they slide and slither. I’ve grabbed a sheet of wax paper and hammered a rolling pin over them a few times, to absolutely no avail, except for a heap of shredded wax paper.

Luckily, an adorable silver mortar and pestle comes to my rescue.

I throw a handful of pods in the bowl and happily clunk the silver pestle down until I hear crunch after satisfying crunch, splitting and cracking, dispersing their wealth.

The very first pod reaps a clump of tar-black seeds. I can hear my East Indian cooking teacher intoning “Only the black ones are good” as I crack open pod after pod that she’d obviously throw out. A sliver fuzzy membrane is scattered among my largely brown, verging on beige collection. I drop it all into my spice grinder and grimace, again, because fifteen minutes of finicky fine motor work hasn’t even covered my spice grinder’s blade!

Despite this ominous beginning, the seeds whirl into a satisfying silvery and soft powder that trails up into my waiting nostrils with an explosion of menthol and sweet, peppery perfume that is unmistakably cardamom.

Why don’t I just throw up a white flag and buy it ground?

Because I want flavour. Whole spices that are crushed or ground right before use, release essential oils full of oomph. And oomph is what I have planned for this special little biscotti packed with toasted almonds and pumpkin seeds, filled with organic flours, eggs, sugar and vanilla then made perfect thanks to cardamom in the batter. I finish each and every log of biscotti dough with a sparkle of cardamom sugar.

Just a pinch will do it.

Cardamom Biscotti

Servings: 5-6 dozen
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I really can’t live in a house without biscotti. They are my go-to cookie and a welcome gift to friends and family . Thanks to the double bake, they store for weeks, even months in a closed glass container and travel well on airplanes and road trips.

Biscotti Batter:

1 cup whole, raw almonds

½ cup pumpkin seeds

1 ¼ cup organic all purpose flour

1 ¼ cup organic soft whole wheat flour

1 1/4 cups organic granulated sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cardamom

1/2 tsp salt

4 large eggs

3 tsp vanilla

The Finishing Touches:

1-3 tbsp flour (for rolling out logs)

½ tsp ground cardamom

1 tbsp organic granulated

Preheat oven to 350 ° F.

To toast almonds, arrange on a baking sheet and bake for 5 minutes. Add pumpkin seeds to the sheet and bake another 5 minutes. Allow nuts and seeds to cool completely.

In a large bowl, combine flours, sugar, baking powder, cardamom and salt. Use a whisk to mix thoroughly.

Whisk eggs and vanilla in bowl of an electric mixer until frothy. Use the paddle attachment to mix in flour and sugar mixture. As soon as the dough clumps around the paddle, add toasted almonds and pumpkin seeds and mix until just combined.

Dust countertop with flour. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Spoon out one quarter of the sticky dough, dust lightly with flour and working quickly, roll into a 8-10 inch log. Transfer log to baking sheet. Repeat 3 times.

In a small bowl, mix sugar and cardamom. Sprinkle over logs with pinched fingers.

Bake for 30 minutes or until biscotti logs are golden and firm. Completely cool logs on a rack for at least 30 min. Using a serrated knife, cut crosswise into 3/4 inch wide slices. Arrange cut side down on baking sheets and return to 350 oven for 10-15 minutes or until golden-brown and crisp.

February 13, 2019September 14, 2021

MadoFood5 Comments

The rub on spices

Decades ago, I warned Toronto Star readers in my “Taste of Asia” column to throw out any ground spices and herbs in their cupboards older than six months. I said they were past their prime. Defunct. Bad stuff.

No one likes a bossy food writer, so I tried to soften the tone and replace visions of global spice carnage with a gentle challenge: Close your eyes, open a random bottle and take a whiff.

“If you can’t smell anything, toss it,” I cajoled.

Well, I’m still on a spice rant after all these years. Commercially dried and ground spices and herbs lose most of their je ne sais quoi the moment they are harvested and processed, for it is at this juncture that their flavour-filled essential oils begin to degrade.

It gets worse.

When herbs and spices are ground into a powder, they are exposed to the ravages of oxidization and time… especially if they fall into obscurity in a deranged spice drawer like mine.

Luckily, mine underwent a radical makeover last week. I threw out all the wizened and yellowed dried red peppers, aroma-less ground powders of dubious distinction and the contents of any package, bottle or tin box that landed in said drawer prior to 2015 – with the exception of nutmeg.

I’m the proud owner of some relatively ancient nutmeg nuts, encased in shells and decorated with a fancy filament of mace. They come from Grenada and I began to horde them after several culinary visits to the Spice Island of the Caribbean. Alas, these nutmegs have broken all my self-imposed “Spice and Herb Guidelines”. They demonstrate incredible flavour once I hack off the shell with the blunt end of a knife and finely grate with my Cuisipro rasp.

The places this nutmeg goes! Sometimes it’s just a sprinkle over a Grenada-style rum punch. Or, a teaspoon into garam masala bound for a Punjabi-style curry. So alive are my nutmeg relics that a taster at my table recently detected a single smidgen slipped into a creamy, rich Yukon gold potato gratin.

Despite an undeniably close connection to the ever-popular nutmeg, mace is one loner of a spice. It boasts a well-known affinity with pumpkin, but just doesn’t seem to pop up on the recipe radar otherwise. You can imagine my glee, when I stumbled on a rub recipe calling for a whopping teaspoon of the stuff. I had some whole mace at my fingertips and was ready to put it through the grinder.

I simply peeled the lacy filaments off my whole nutmegs and placed them in my trusty spice blender that has continued to get revved up over all the cumin, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom (green and black), peppercorns, hot peppers, coriander, all spice, fennel and fenugreek I have been feeding it for the past three decades.

In went the mace filaments and out came a surprisingly pumpkin-toned powder that tasted more pungent and citrusy than its soul-sister nutmeg. When I closed my eyes and did a side-by-side sniff of the two, it was difficult to tell them apart. No wonder McCormick spice’s web site suggests putting either one in many of the same destinations, be it custards, eggnog, spice-filled quick breads or dusted on steamed veggies like carrots or sugar snap peas.

Back to the rub, which I spotted in my beloved Joy of Cooking but as per usual, put my own riff on. I chose it not only for the mace, but all the roasted cumin and cracked peppercorns.

Admittedly, cumin is my favourite. Sometimes I grind it raw, but I’m more apt to first toast the seeds in a dry frying pan over medium heat until they start to smoke. (Dry-frying spices is a risky venture as there’s a fine line between browning and burning. It helps to keep a sample of raw cumin seeds nearby as you dry-fry, to offer a visual comparison.) I like to grind the cumin seeds while they’re hot so as to savour the hot cloud of nutty cumin smoke released when the lid comes off.

I used my Thai mortar and pestle to crack or coarsely grind the black peppercorns used in this rub. To add authenticity, I took my hulking mortar outside, placed it on my back deck and visualized the northern Thai town of Fang where I saw countless fine cooks squat and pound – a satisfying way to approach this kitchen tool and more effective than placing it on a kitchen counter.

Last but not least, salt. If you like smoky flavours, check out Salish, an Alderwood smoked sea salt.

Smokey, toasty pork rub

Servings: 1 1/2 cup
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Get out your spice grinder and have some fun concocting this gorgeous mixture. Whole nutmeg nuts can be found in Kensington or St Lawrence Market or Little India. Try this on grilled pork chops, baby back ribs or slow-cooked pork shoulder. Rub one tablespoon per pound just prior to cooking or better still, rub and refrigerate overnight.

½ cup sweet or smoked paprika

¼ cup ground roasted cumin

¼ cup packed brown sugar

¼ cup cracked/coarsely ground black peppers

2 tbsp hot cayenne powder

2 tbsp sea salt

1 tbsp chile guajillo molido (or any mild chile powder)

1 tbsp smoked salt

2 tsp mace

June 11, 2015January 7, 2016

MadoFood4 Comments

A Vij’s attack

Who knew that a night at the movies would set off a torrent of onion, ginger and garlic chopping, a spice drawer purge and some of the most sumptuous curries I have ever created in my kitchen? I didn’t. But recently I paid an exorbitant $35 to watch a TIFF Food in Film movie called The Lunchbox and forgot all about my sticker shock once the reel began, reveling in the click-clack of Bombay trains coursing over tracks as thousands of freshly packed, hot tiffin boxes made their way to hungry civil servants, just in time for 1 pm lunch.

The Lunchbox charmed with a sweet, unexpected love story based on a lonely wife’s kitchen wizardry. As she dipped into spice baskets and seductively licked a smear of sauce off the palm of her hand, I too, longed to dive back into my kitchen and suffuse it with the perfume of cardamom and nutty richness of toasted cumin.

But after the last credits rolled and the lights turned on, out stepped CBC’s Matt Galloway and the owners of Vancouver’s Vij’s restaurant holding microphones, ready to discuss the film on the stage before us.

Galloway and Vikram Vij both gushed unabashed foodie enthusiasms saying their thoughts always centred around food, from morning to night, yet Vikram’s wife, Meeru Dhalwala said, “Sure I love food… and our lives revolve around it, but I get sick of it, too!”

Galloway and Vij’s heads both snapped in her direction.

“Don’t look so shocked,” she said. “I love my kids, too. And get sick of them, also,” she giggled.

I was instantly hooked. She talked about the blood, sweat and tears she put into the writing of her two cookbooks and why her restaurant kitchens are staffed by women only.

“We tried a male chef once. He had tons of experience but his ego got in the way. I really care about the ambience of my kitchens. It needs to be calm and creative when we are cooking- not full of yelling and fear.”

I figured anyone who had such a fine philosophy about food, children and kitchen ambience, was my kind of cook and I instantly nabbed a copy of Vij’s At Home.

I started with cauliflower, the lowly crucifer vegetable that plays a pivotal role in The Lunchbox and is generally adored by Indians. Aloo gobi (potatoes and cauliflower) is a standard you’ll find in most cookbooks and Indian restaurants. I’ve made it many times and have always felt a little let down by the results. It takes a lot to push this plain white veggie with its sulfurous odor into the realm of “Ah ha!” but Meeru’s Spicy Cauliflower Steak does just that. Her culinary tricks include half a cup of oil (I cut that in half), a slow braise in a rich sauce and a goodly punch of whole cloves.

It didn’t hurt that I used one of the finest brands of pureed tomatoes: Mutti made in Parma, Italy. This passata (tomato puree) is sweet, luscious and has a Hindi-kind of ring to it.

The Vijs had mentioned on stage that they drink wine with every Indian meal they prepare and that their default – or other favourite cuisine – is Italian. The more I perused their cookbook, the more I sensed a Parma-Punjab fusion going on. Such as “Ground Fennel Seed Curry”, in which a rich marriage of fennel, tomato puree and cream creates the perfect sauce for fish, seafood or chicken. Among Indian cookery, this dish is super easy and fast. You decide whether to serve it plain (vegetarian) or drape it luxuriously over some protein. Serve on basmati rice or even linguine.

Ground fennel seed curry

Servings: 6
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The difference between mediocre and fabulous Indian cooking lies squarely in the treatment of spices. Buy whole (except turmeric!) and grind in a coffee or spice grinder. Don’t store ground spices for longer than a month or two. BJ Supermarket (1449 Gerrard St East, near Coxwell) has every exotic spice you’ll ever want and more. Recipe adapted from Vij’s at Home (Douglas & McIntyre, 2010)

6 tbsp fennel seeds

1/3 -1/2 cup cooking oil

2 cups pureed tomatoes

1 tbsp (or less) salt

1 tsp turmeric

2 tbsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground fenugreek seeds

2-3 tsp crushed dried chilies

4 cups water

1 cup cream

Heat a 10-inch heavy-bottomed frying pan on high for 1 minute. Add fennel seeds, and stirring regularly, cook for 2 to 3 minutes, or until slightly dark and fragrant. Pour roasted seeds onto a plate and allow to cool for 20 minutes. Grind the fennel seeds in a spice (or coffee) grinder. Set aside 2 Tbsp ground fennel seeds for this recipe. Store the remaining seeds in an airtight container in a dark cupboard or drawer for use in other dishes.

In a medium pot, heat oil on medium for 1 minute. Add ground fennel seeds and stir continuously for 30 seconds, or until fennel begins to foam lightly. Carefully and immediately add tomatoes, stirring well. Add salt, turmeric, cumin, fenugreek seeds and crushed dried chillies and sauté for 5 minutes, or until oil glistens.

Pour in water and cream. Stir and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for 5 minutes.

Gently poach a pound of fish fillets, shellfish or chicken pieces in this sauce until just done. Serve over basmati rice or pasta.