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Spices are magic. 2 May 2008 10:35 am

Posted by Tracy in : cooking, events, fangirl, geekery, pictures, vegan, vegetarian , trackback

Magic, I tell you! There is phenomenal cosmic power in my overflowing spice rack, a collection I’ve been building up for years and literally across continents (encompassing not just where things were grown, but also where they were purchased), but mostly bulk and occasionally packaged spices from stores all over Eugene:

My spice collection.

There’s no real organization — for a long time there weren’t even any labels, much to the horror of my mother the pharmacist, who associates such disorder with people getting poisoned (sorry, Mom). I had things more or less memorized and when in doubt would just open jars and sniff to make sure I’d gotten the right one. Then Peter got me a label-maker from the hardware store, and now it’s amazing I haven’t marked up the whole house with stickers saying stuff like “light switch” and “door frame.” But I digress. For the most part I store my spices as you see them above: at room temperature, tightly sealed in jars, to keep them fresh, with larger containers for the ones I use so frequently a smaller container would run out before its contents had a chance to get stale (mmm, cumin). Re-used yeast jars are one of my favorites, and I’m pretty proud of the fact that we have emptied more of those than I need to fill with spices. I’m pretty sure baking that much bread means we’re living the good life. But I digress again. Although I wouldn’t mind having a spice rack set up so all the jars were only one layer deep, for less rummaging around, I’m pretty happy working around and through my own disorder, with delicious results. Which brings me back to making magic.

Consider this boring, ordinary pot of red lentils (masoor dal) and moong dal (dried split mung beans):

An ordinary pot of red lentils and moong dal...

The only spice in there is a measly half-teaspoon of turmeric. But on the ever-brilliant advice of Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cooking (and yes, I promise to buy this cookbook the next time I see it for sale anywhere, provided I can hold out against the temptation of buying it from Amazon), it became the site of culinary transformation and revelation. I harnessed the power of my spice collection to make deliciousness, seen here in the pot:

cooking

and here on the plate, with rice and turnip greens saag (seasoned with garlic and ginger and mustard seeds because I was really after mustard greens but the market didn’t have any):

Dinner, 30 April 2007.

I know, you’re saying, “Tracy, it’s just lentils.” But there is no such thing as “just lentils” here at TracyFood, oh no no. Not when I love them with an unholy love, not when the top four pages after the front are kushari, my favorite lentil salad, dal bhaat (the first experiment even, not the new and improved version), and red lentil soup, and certainly not when after all my years of love and cooking them they can still be at the heart of yet another revelation about food.

You see, what was magical about this recipe (“Moong Dal and Red Lentils with Browned Onion,” page 170 of the cookbook currently topping my Most Wanted list) was that instead of first cooking the spices, then adding the pulses and letting everything simmer together, like in my favorite dal bhaat recipe, in this preparation I cooked the dal first, with barely any seasoning at all, then added cooked spices at the end, to be mixed in just before serving, and it was still awesome, despite running counter to all my intuitions about building flavor cooked spices simmering together with the food for a long time and then maybe adding a pinch of something at the end to finish it. So that was really exciting, a lesson both in the awesomeness of lentils and spices with the help of a cookbook whose author is clearly a great lady who wants her readers to be happy.

This post is dedicated to the Show Us Your… Spice Collection! event by Gabi of The Feast Within. I look forward to reading the other entries!


  • Hi Shari! The "spices by sight and/or smell and taste" trick is definitely an acquired skill, which I've developed through years of practice (and copious free time, I guess). It's a fun one!
  • You have gone through a lot of jars of yeast. I'm impressed! I'm also impressed that you can open a jar, take a whiff, and know which one it is. That's a gift!
  • Lentils bind the universe together, like The Force or something.
  • mom
    Don't buy----- Library Book Sales are powerful.
  • Hi Tracy-
    Thanks for a wonderful look at your spice collection and for a scrummy dish- I will definitely have to try it!
    See you at the roundup.
    xoxo
    Gabi
  • Cj
    Oh mystical magical Spice Guru, dish out your wisdom to us, your hungry followers. Teach us the way of bread-- satisfying our kneads-- and the spice of life. We simmer (especially down here, it is way too toasty) in the warmth of your knowledge.*

    Bless you for sharing the lentils. I like lentils. I could learn to love them. I will work on it.

    *I was in a whimsical mood.

    And NO BUYING cookbooks! (unless, of course, they are too cheap and good to pass up; there is practical, and then there is being silly). They do have such things in New York. In fact, that is where I bought my first cookbook-- The Goodhousekeeping Illustrated 1980 edition-- off a blanket on Broadway and 79th St.
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