CardaYUM

Saucyman, what can you tell me about Cardamom? - Spicy

Native to India, the spice was brought to Guatemala 100 and some years ago and the Central American country is the worlds still the largest producer or not. India likes to claim that mantle as well. In either case, the fruit travels far from the tree - 10% of the world’s crop goes to Northern Europeans, Scandawhovians, Danes and other Baltic facing countries who love the flavor in their baked goods but it is the Arab world who consumes 80% of the crop, used mostly to flavor coffee.

Its scent is described as floral, pepper, gingery, piney it is a seductive smell – Sri Lankan born poet and author, Michael Ondaatje wrote a poem called the Cinnamon Peeler, a work so blatantly sexual, it would have made Neruda blush. Cinnamon peelers have little on Cardamom huskers, who must wait until the fruit is ready; each pod develops at a different rate so the plant must be worked by hand, pickers returning again and again looking for ready pods. This intensive labor helps make cardamom the 3rd most expensive spice in the world, behind saffron and vanilla. Once the small papery globe is picked, it is dried releasing the seeds that reside in one of the pod’s 3 chambers.

Different varieties carry designators like ‘true’, ‘false’ and a special label of ‘bastard’ for Thai Cardamom. A more useful classification for cardamom, for the exterior husk anyway, is to sort by color and here the seeds which are used as the spice as are sorted into green, brown or black for sale. Color and lineage aside, all are relatives of the ginger family and like ginger spice has a warming effect. The word cardamom means to warm in Arabic – this warmth is credited to terpene and a eucalyptusy compound called cineole. Whether spurious, true or false, green, brown or black - the seeds are closely related, the main difference is how they are used culinarily.

Green is the cardamom of sweets and coffee. Gwaha is a boiled coffee made of cracked green cardamom and ground coffee. Brown and black, whose scent is as unsubtle as a Banana Republican’s cologne, are used for savory foods like pilaf, pickles and meat. Both black and green cardamom are used in the Indian spice mix called garam masala - a fluid interpretation of what is commonly thought of as curry.

At the store a shopper can buy pods, seeds or ground. I like the seeds, extracting the seeds from the pods is laborious and ground packaged spices are always pricey (cardamom or not) and come in sizes that would take years to use. I have the luxury of purchasing the seeds in small quantities. At home in the Saucykitchen, they get used in boiled sweetened coffee, ground for garam masala or occasionally heated in milk or cream before being strained out to give the subtlest hint of seduction in a custard or pudding.