The Tuesday Spice: Cumin

Hello cooking lovers!
Today I'd like to begin the first post of the Tuesday Spice, an informative little recap on cooking's best, famous or not, spices.
And this time, I'd like to explore the possibilities offered by...

CUMIN

 

A relatively well-known ingredient, cumin can still be tricky to use. Its oblong seeds present little ridges and tiny bristles.

 However, it's more common to find its ground version in little convenient bottles. As usual with spices, freshly-ground seeds will deliver a stronger and more flavorful taste. 

When it comes to perfume, cumin is known for its warm savor, and it slightly spicy aftertaste. It's nothing like red pepper of course, and below common curry. For some, it may even feel a little bit acrid on the tongue, but far from being a disadvantage, this allows cumin to enhance the bland taste of some ingredients.

• Maybe that's why cumin first use has often been bread. Cumin bread may be decorated with the seeds of cumin, and the ground spice may be added (in little amounts) in any bread dough to enhance the flavor.

• It is also not unusual to find cumin in cooked meats and pork products. Thus, you may find cumin sausages or dry sausages fairly easily. 

• Another food benefitting from the addition of cumin is our most beloved cheese. In the East of France is produced the deliciously famous Munster (a cow milk cheese). And of course some people have found a way to add cumin to the original recipe, transforming an already very tasty cheese into an explosion of savor.

Of course there are several other uses of cumin, and as usual in the world of cooking, the only limit is the imagination of the cook (and the tastebuds of the eaters!). Cumin blends well with certain preparations of vegetables (Eggplant for instance) or certain strong meat: in the first restaurant I worked at, we used to make a lamb parmentier (that is to say spicy lamb meat topped with mashed potatoes) and the lamb was first boiled in a flavorful stock, then simmered in olive oil with onions and a lot of cumin. The end result was a great marriage between the super strong lamb preparation and the soft potatoes.

And that's it for cumin. Thank you for reading, and see you next week for another spice! In the meantime, cook wondeful spicy recipes!