Spice King, Arun Kapil

Cook with spice to improve your health, and discover a whole new bunch of flavours

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by Arun Kapil, Food Editor of AN Editions

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We’re at that point, that oh-so-familiar point when we know we should probably get ourselves kick-started into the new year, yet still hanker after the sloth-like wisdom of the past few days, weeks if you’re lucky (or young) enough. As we emerge somewhat reluctantly from a winter’s slumber of glorious festive indulgence, there’s never a better time to add a sparkle of vibrant spice and to experiment with your home cooking. To switch it up, get stuck in and cook with spices.

Preparing food from scratch is becoming the much-heralded new norm. Something I whole-heartedly support in my quest to shun all that is ultra-processed with the odd, occasional and rarefied yet clearly edifying exception. Is Guinness ultra-processed…? As we begin to rediscover the joys and delicious varieties of local produce, aided by the convenience of a variety of meal kits, pastes and much more, we’re back to the reality of simply putting food on the table every day for eagerly awaiting, hungry tums. Whether cooking for yourself, for family or partners, the key to providing delicious, healthy meals – day-in, day-out – to the same audience is variety. Indeed, variety is the spice of life.

The whole process of chopping, slicing, frying, roasting, garnishing, presenting and eating can always be enhanced with the addition of a little spice. Food can have such an uplifting effect on mood and provides an ace break to daily monotony. Spices can add a real twist to the norm from beans on toast with a sprinkle of black pepper, maybe a crack of cumin seeds and, for the ingredient adventurer, a dollop of tamarind and pomegranate molasses through to the most opulent of treat feasts. Spice is such a versatile ingredient; when raw it can add zing and clarity. Local ingredients combined with spice can be easily and simply transformed; taken to a whole new and brilliant delicious height.

It all doesn’t have to be about Indian, Mexican, Thai, a curry, ‘mole’ or paste to involve spices. I think of fresh, fragrant spices as an everyday ingredient. Spices add a wealth of vibrant flavours and clean finish. They can create smoky notes, menthol notes, delicate fragrant subtle aromas, sweet tingling and vibrant flavours. A few basic ideas, a bit of thought and a desire to treat our food with care is all it can take to cook at home.

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What to look for?

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Spices should be fresh, vibrant, zinging with natural flavour. Choosing the best and knowing what to look for isn’t too easy a task as we trawl the shops, big and small. Asian shops are likely to have a good choice of fresh spices as they have a higher turnover rate, but delis and supermarkets have really upped their spice game of late. When faced with shelves of brightly coloured burrs, pods, fruits and seeds, the easiest way to make your choice is simply use your natural senses to check for pungency of smell and vibrancy of colour.

Once you’re happy you’ve hunted down the best, stick to buying whole spices ‘little and often’, as you need them. It’s rather that than storing a whole bunch which simply ends up pushed to the back of your cupboard and never used. Next, keep your spices ‘airtight and out of the light’! Don’t store them in a fridge, there’s no need. A cool, dark cupboard is perfect. Finally, try to grind them only as and when you need them. As with the use of fresh herbs and citrus zest, don’t grind your spices until you need them. I know this can be a bit of pain, but you will notice the flavour difference, your spices will keep better and you will eventually get in the habit.

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Spices for health

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I approach ‘spice health’ via the Ayurvedic route, an ancient Hindu philosophy. Ayurveda describes a system of ‘balance’ as the key to good health and places importance on maintaining a good digestive system at the core of its belief. Herbs and spices are rich in a diverse range of phytochemicals, many of which have been suggested to possess health-giving properties. Tradition and dietary use over years seem to indicate that there is positive benefit to be gained from eating spices. The much reported health benefits of spices are numerous and include the promotion of gut, immune and brain health. Historically in the Indian subcontinent, many spices have also been used to treat ailments of all sorts through the application of Ayurvedic medicine, so to my mind adding them into your everyday diet to create delicious dishes can only be a ‘double bubble’ win. Here are some of my favourite spices.

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Essential store-cupboard spices for your press

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Black pepper

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Pepper, the King of Spices native to India; it was India’s Black Gold. A creeping vine yielding fragrant fruits, or peppercorns. The first corns hailing from India’s Kerala plateau and the Malabar Coast were traded by the Romans, then the Arab, Venetian and Genoese nations. (Famous ancient Roman intellectual Pliny the Elder wrote what is probably the first recorded recipe for black pepper in AD 46, involving the corns mixed with dormice!)

Peppercorns contain an impressive list of plant-derived chemical compounds that are known to have disease-preventing and health-promoting properties. Black peppers have been in use for centuries for their anti-inflammatory, carminative or anti-flatulent properties. Peppercorns are a good source of many anti-oxidant vitamins such as Vitamin C and Vitamin A.

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Incorporating black pepper into your diet

-Pepper can be sprinkled onto any savoury dish to add perfume and pleasant background heat

-Great as a light dusting on dark rich fruits: plums, figs, cherries, blackberries, raspberries etc.

-Perfect for your Christmas pudding to ‘back up’ the heat sensation of the Irish whiskey

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Cinnamon

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In the West, we commonly associate the scent with pastries and desserts, largely restricting its use to sweet recipes. We tend to find it as rather attractive, rolled-up quills, often tied in red ribbon and hung from family Christmas trees. In India, cinnamon bark imparts its full and characteristic flavour readily when fried in hot oil or ghee. Cinnamon is found in spice blends everywhere from continental Europe to Scandinavia, Africa and the Middle East to North and South America. In the latter area, it’s commonly coupled up with chocolate in both sweet and savoury dishes.

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Incorporating cinnamon into your diet

-Used in many desserts and breads from cinnamon buns, poached pears, apple tarts, I find it best with savoury dishes such as lamb, beef, and is great incorporated into yoghurt marinades for chicken

-Sprinkle on bananas for your morning bowl of porridge  

-1 tsp of powdered cinnamon, 2 tbsp honey popped into a glass of warm water, milk or almond milk is a very good deterrent to colds and flu and a good remedy for sore throats

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Coriander

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There are two main varieties; the larger (and my absolute favourite), greeny yellow, oval shaped fruits (seeds) from the tropics and sub-tropical countries of India, Morocco, Australia and the smaller, spherical darker brown fruits most commonly grown in Europe. Coriander fruits (commonly called ‘seeds’) are wonderfully warm, citrusy and packed full of nutrients, not least a whole host of vitamins.

The aroma fades fast so as with all spices I recommend grinding to order – due to its brittle nature, coriander is one of the easiest spices to powder. Dry-roasting or frying in oil takes the wonderful flavours to a whole new level. They’re the key to traditional corned beef and a necessary means for the Irish to preserve their meat. Until the Renaissance period, coriander ‘seed’ was a popular part of English and Irish cuisine, but it is only relatively recently that coriander, in all its forms, is becoming popular once again.

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Incorporating coriander into your diet

-Sprinkle whole seeds into any potato or vegetable oven tray bake for a delicious lemony ping and small crunch texture

-Cracked and lightly smashed they’re brilliant in a whole variety of vinaigrettes and dressings

-For the more ambitious, they’re excellent candied whole and used to garnish lemon possets, syllabubs and trifles

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Cumin

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The fruits, usually called seeds, can be dry-roasted or fried in ghee to maximise their intense savoury flavour. Cumin is a major part of much Indian cooking, and a constituent part of garam masala and the Bengali five-spice mixture, panch phoron. Cumin actually has a high iron content and highly reputed digestive properties, indeed the Hindi for cumin, ‘jeera’, is derived from a Sanskrit word meaning ‘digestive’. Health properties: antimicrobial. Cumin may improve gut motility and help in digestion by augmenting gastrointestinal juice (enzyme) secretions.

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Incorporating cumin into your diet

-Brilliant with roast lamb dishes, either incorporated while in a crust for the meat, or ground and used as part of a marinade

-Aid to digestion when incorporated with a buttermilk and a touch of salt as a natural hydrating drink

-I make a delicious rhubarb crumble incorporating cumin and orange zest

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Ginger

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Ginger is available in a whole host of forms and related to turmeric, evident in the citrusy warmth and earthiness the spices share. When powdered, look for a dark beige-coloured powder, preferably with tiny fibres, denoting its purity. Stem ginger in syrup is found in glass jars and the crystallised version, coated in sugar, can often be interchanged in most recipes.

Ginger’s popularity in Indian cooking grew particularly in the thirteenth century with the rise of Mughal and Nizwa rule. Sweetly spicy ginger is well known for its medicinal qualities, often brewed up with tea, especially in winter. Young ginger is mild and can be pickled. A paste of fresh ginger combined with fresh garlic is a staple ingredient in many Indian kitchens.

Such a variety of uses in sweet treats and desserts, well known around the world, ginger snaps, speculaas and nankhatai biscuits, parkin, gingerbread and pain d’épices, ginger adds sweet warm perfume and background heat to sweet dishes

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Incorporating ginger into your diet

-A delicious, quick pickle can be easily made peeling fresh ginger, chopping into julienne strips, adding a little crushed rock salt, lemon or lime juice, fresh green chillies and a little ground cumin. Perfect with paratha breads, fish or chicken

-Many drinks benefit from a deft touch of powdered ginger, when mixed with honey, lemon and hot water, or mixed with cloves, cinnamon, star anise and a little sugar into hot wine, mulled wine or ‘vin chaud’, lassi, smoothies and milkshakes

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Turmeric

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Grown in India, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia this is a truly wonderful spice, proven to have beneficial effects as an anti-rheumatoid, anti-inflammatory and anti-carcinogen. The orange-gold hue of the spice when both fresh and dried is simply beautiful, but can cause rather stubborn stains. Although the colour is similar to saffron, the flavour most certainly is not and you really shouldn’t attempt to substitute one for the other. Its bitter astringency means it needs to be thoroughly ‘cooked out’, usually in hot oil, and used in small quantities. Used correctly, it imparts an earthy background note essential to round out the flavours correctly in many Indian dishes.

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Incorporating turmeric into your diet

-Sprinkle powdered turmeric over any vegetables when roasting in the oven. Blitz fresh turmeric root into all types of pastes and marinades for fish, lamb and beef

-Turmeric is related to ginger so can be used in the same dishes very well together. It has similar flavour properties, but whereas ginger is perceived as ‘sweet’, turmeric is ‘astringent’, almost bitter. As such turmeric should be used in sparing amounts to balance sweetness and richness in dishes. 

…and for the more spice adventurous, a favourite of mine:

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Asafoetida

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Grown in middle Asia, Afghanistan, Iran and mainly India this oleoresin gum is tapped from the root of the ferula plant. Reputed to have excellent digestive and anti-flatulence properties this spice tends to be used extensively in lentil-based dishes with a really deep garlicky, onion fragrance and flavour.

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Incorporating asafoetida into your diet

-When thinking how to use asafoetida, think how you might use ‘Thai fish sauce’ – very sparingly!

-Grind and use very, very sparingly in lentil dishes. About 0.01 per cent application. In other words, 1g of this pungent resin to 10kg of ‘foodstuff’

-Substitute for garlic and onions, I use it in risottos. A great dish is, ‘celery leaf, asafoetida risotto, lemon and walnut oil’

-Used with care, it’s great when added to fruity cordials

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Three Top Tips

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Too many ‘old spices’ in your cupboard?

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Spices will never ‘go off’ or do you any harm, though once they’re past their ‘Best Before’ date they’ll just not taste as vibrant, or as they should, so don’t worry. If they’re coming to their end, simply pop small amounts of them into a blender and make your own garam masala. What can possibly go wrong? After each spice you add to the mill, give your blend a quick smell. Once you like the fragrance, lightly toast your mix and pop it into a jar. Every so often, pop some of your blend into the different dishes you’re cooking. I do this and stir the ‘Make-up Mix’ into baked beans, beat with butter and use with fish or steaks, sprinkle over root vegetables and roast in the oven with a little oil. You get the picture. Experiment and enjoy.

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Do I need to toast, roast or fry?

Spices do not need to be tempered in every dish you cook. When cooking stews, casseroles or curries try adding the majority of a blend to the sofrito, onions, garlic, ginger base, or whichever of the frying Aromats you’re using, then add the rest towards the end together with the liquids. This helps lift the dish with a vibrant spice hit

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Not all spices are equal; understanding the basics

-Spices are all about flavour, NOT heat, and each spice has its unique flavour characteristic. For:

-Heat, think chillies, ginger and peppercorns (black, white, red and green)

-Perfume, think cloves, green cardamom, mace and nutmeg

-Earthiness: turmeric, cumin, paprika

-Zing and depth: coriander seeds, fennel, star anise

-Sweetness: cinnamon, vanilla

-Smokiness: black cardamom, smoked paprika

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Arun Kapil, Food Editor of AN Editions, founded and owns a spice company, Green Saffron Spices. He works sustainably direct with partner farms mainly to the west and north of India and some in the south. He works directly from source. He owns total chain of custody, depleting links in the chain, bringing direct line of sight to fields of cultivation. Arun and his partner Olive began by selling one or two sachets a week of bespoke blends with accompanying recipes at a farmers market stall in Mahon Point, Cork. They now sell spices and seasonings to globally based blue chips, onward food processors and are just in the throes of re-launching their brand, based on Modern India meal solutions, sauces, spice blends, naan, condiments and basmati. They started the business boot-strapping from the bottom up, managed with a good deal of jugaard. He considers himself to be a masaalchi and at best a khansama supported by a strong network of Irish, Indian and British agri-experts and businessmen.