Cumin

"little striped torpedoes of flavour" Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall

I'm pretty sure that I first encountered cumin in what this family calls simply - Kebabs - and probably the close second favourite dish of the Dearmans. I know I have written about the dish before - and sadly the recipe is not online. So just as a reminder - it's the marinade that is the thing - for beef cut in strips and threaded on to skewers to cook. The marinade for around 500g beef is 6 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp each of soy sauce and lemon juice, a crushed clove of garlic, cumin to taste - these days because I love it so much it's around a dessertspoon - and a chopped onion. That's it. I first made it in England having found the recipe in a Sunday Times colour magazine in one of Robert Carrier's columns. I think he then called it Indonesian satay, because it was part of an article on what he called and Indonesian rice table - Rijstaffel. I collected these articles and kept them for years, but when we moved here they disappeared. One of the tragedies of my life.

However, he also later published the recipe in The Robert Carrier Cookbook - renamed as California beef Kebabs - which to my mind is probably nearer to the truth, in spite of the far eastern ingredients. And so we have continued to make it - evolving as it goes - more onions, more cumin have I think been the major adjustments. But enough of that. As I say - I have written about it before.

So why am I talking about cumin today? Well I have just finished 'reading' a Christmas present book - Around the World in 80 Meatballs - which will get its own post sometime soon, and as I read I could not help but be aware how many recipes included cumin (and breadcrumbs) in the mix. I know I have not put cumin in the spotlight before, so here goes. Time for its moment in this little tiny corner of the internet.

Unsurprisingly perhaps it's related to the parsley family which includes caraway - with which it is often confused, dill and carrots.

In her book The Grammar of Spice, the designer Caz Hildebrand tells us that

"The spiciness of spices - the very thing we humans are drawn to in them - is really a defence mechanism - a kind of armour."

And as an aside - how do you pronounce it? I pronounce it kewmin but I know that I mostly hear people say kummin and apparently these days many say koomin - the Americans I think. I pronounced it kewmin because I didn't know how to pronounce it - English is definitely not a phonetic language - and it seemed to me that the lack of a second 'm' meant that the first part should sound like 'kew'.

It's native to the Eastern Mediterranean - no surprises there - some say Egypt, some say Iran, but what they all agree on is that it dates back as far as 6000 BC. The Arabs and the Phœnecians then spread it to India, to Africa and Europe. The Egyptians, as well as using it in their cooking, also used it in the mummification process, and it has always been considered to have medicinal properties, although apparently there is no evidence for this.

The ancient Greeks loved it so much they even put on the table in much the same way as we might do with pepper and salt. However, according to Lucy Malouf:

"The ancient Greeks also considered cumin a symbol of meanness - a miserly person was said to be a 'cumin splitter.'

The Romans also used it a lot, with Pliny saying - "When one is tired of all seasonings, cumin remains welcome." It is thought that the Romans spread it to the west, and later the Conquistadores took it to the Americas.

At some point it spread to India - if we assume that it is native to the Eastern Mediterranean - and of course it is a major, major ingredient in all of their cooking, so much so that today India produces 75% of the world's supply - followed by Syria, Turkey, UAE and Iran - well one wonders about some of them in the current state of the world. So many spice mixes include cumin, and as mint is to lamb in the UK - well cumin is the same constant companion to lamb as you travel east.

Every article that I read about cumin always mentioned the MIddle East, North Africa and India as the main users of the spice, but it is actually much more widespread than that - as my meatball book identified. Gourmet Traveller seems to agree as in their collection of 29 Cumin recipes there were several from elsewhere - such as this Shaanxii style lamb with cumin and celery or a Spanish Sopa de tomate al comino (Tomato and cumin soup) from Frank Camorra

It's ubiquitous and can be found in every supermarket aisle. I try to buy it in largeish bags as I do use it a lot. I imagine you are all familiar with it, even though our parents probably were not.

Various people have tried to describe the taste. I even have a book given to me by my daughter-in-law some time ago called The Grammar of Spice, which tried in a very arty kind of way to represent the taste and appearance of various spices, with plates from a nineteenth century book of art The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones

- Islamic mostly - from tiles, textiles and so on. This is the one chosen to represent cumin. It's Greek and the author describes it thus:

"Ovoid shape and Egyptian colours preserved by being buried underground evoke the earthy essence of cumin."

hmm. The author of the book is Caz Hildebrand a designer of many best-selling cookbooks, and it's slightly weird - dare I say pretentious? But she does have a couple of quotes worth pondering on:

"'Form without colour is like a body without soul,' wrote Jones. The same could be said for food without spice and its complex diversity of aromas and tastes."

"the history of spices is the history of seduction, mythology, bloodshed, romance and cliché."

On a more down to earth note Ottolenghi says: "Whenever I’m asked about my ultimate cupboard ingredient, I say cumin" and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall joins in with a lengthier endorsement:

"Cumin is a spice I would hate to be without, especially at this time of year, when its fennel-crossed-with-citrus-zest-with-a-hint-of-burnt-toast savour stimulates and comforts in equal measure. Its warm, orangey, woody notes can be a little addictive, however: the more you cook with it, the more you hanker for its defining touch."

It's a bit like parsley for me - when in doubt - add a bit of cumin.

So to end, what have I found for you to try? Well of course there are literally thousands of dishes and probably hundreds of spice mixes that all depend to a greater or lesser degree on cumin - e..g. baharat, chermoula, garam masala, harissa, dukkah ...

I'll begin with this - which was a Facebook post from the late Greg Malouf - and there is not really a recipe - his words are:

"Harissa labneh. Rehydrated dried chillies, sieved & blended with natural yoghurt and pure cream, sea salt and cumin. Amazing with crispy fried chicken or quail"

It looks a bit like ice-cream doesn't it? Is there harissa in there as well or are his 'rehydrated dried chillies' the harissa element? Plenty of room for experimentation there.

There is a recipe online however, courtesy of Gourmet Traveller of his Baharat lamb shoulder with onions and moghrabieh which you would have to say is a pretty classic kind of dish - from Morocco and his book Moorish. I also saw somewhere that:

"Throughout North Africa a popular street food is hard-boiled eggs dunked in little dishes of cumin salt."

Cumin salt, being just that - cumin + salt, cumin toasted and ground.

Then a selection from two obvious picks - Ottolenghi - Turkey and courgette burgers with spring onion and cumin; and Claudia Roden on the Ever Open Sauce website - Fried fish with cumin and yoghurt sauce and one less obvious - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - just to show that the English like it too: Merguez kofte with seasoned yoghurt - I could try all of those.

Maybe I should put a pinch in tonight's made up tomato galette. A pinch in the bean/cheese/yoghurt/mint base might be a good thing - or in the mint oil I was going to drizzle - yes drizzle over the top.

YEARS GONE BY

January 23

2025 - Nothing

2024 - Nothing

2023 - Nothing

2022 - 16 Rue Marie-Stuart, Paris 2e ar

2021 - Missing

2020 - Spanakopita without the spinach = tyro or tiropita

2019 - Nothing

2018 - Nothing

2017 - A word from Claudia Roden