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Spice: A Cook's Companion

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Beginning with a guide to 50 of Mark's much-loved spices and blends, including their legacy and main culinary affinities, the book then offers over 100 innovative recipes that make the most of your new spice knowledge. For each spice Mark gives an introduction, a guide to using it, which spice blends it features in, and a list of ingredients that the spice has an affinity with. Focusing on the familiars including cumin, turmeric, vanilla, pepper and cinnamon, Spice will also open the door to some lesser-known spices. Under spice blends (of which there are thirty-nine), there are several I’ve never made before: advieh, Cape Malay spice blend, sweet dukkah, gunpowder mix, hawaij, khmeli-suneli, niter kibbeh, qualat daqqa, svanuri marili, timur ko chop, and tempero baiano. The recipes build on bringing your spices alive – whether that's creating blends to easily enhance your food when short of time on a weekday evening, or in infusing and blooming spices to bring out the very best of these treasured ingredients.

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The recipes Mark includes are not only appealing to eat, but also provide plenty of inspiration for using spices more creatively in the kitchen. Focusing on the familiars including cumin, turmeric, vanilla, pepper and cinnamon, Spice will also open the door to some lesser-known spices such as grains of paradise, asafoetida, tonka beans and passion berries. I’ve come across references and recipes featuring achiote (aka annato), anise seeds (not the same thing as star anise), cinnamon berries, grains of paradise, kokum, tonka beans, and wattleseed before but never cooked with them. Mark Diacono is lucky enough to spend most of his time eating, growing, writing and talking about food. Last comes the Drinks chapter with recipes such as Melon and pineapple tepache (a Mexican fermented drink), Loomi tea (made with dried limes(, Ginger, mace and verbenna berry switchel (a sweet sour drink from the USA), Nutmeg syrup, Sol khadi (a spicy and sour Indian drink), Ginger beer, Spiced rum, Krupnik (a Polish spiced-honey vodka), White dalmation (a pepper-spiced cocktail), Ponche crema (a Venezuelan eggnog), Mulled cider, and Tascalate (a Mexican cold chocolate drink).With a few (such as harissa) there are specific instructions on how to make the recipe; for the rest Mark provides basic instructions and advice in the chapter introduction. As with herbs, spices transform the life-giving act of feeding into the life-enhancing pleasure of eating. Rather he has created a very personal collection of “ forty-odd spices and a similar number of spice blends” to share. It’s easy to forget how versatile spices are in sweet dishes, not just savoury, and to this end Mark provides many tempting recipes in the Sweet Things chapter.

The Cooks Companion | Harvey Jones The Cooks Companion | Harvey Jones

Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. Incidentally, if you are interested in the historic movement of spices around the world, please allow me to recommend one of my very favourite cookbooks from last year, The Nutmeg Trail: A Culinary Journey Along The Ancient Spice Routes by Eleanor Ford. Bigger Things is full of dishes that are suitable for a main meal (from breakfast through to dinner) and offers recipes like Chipotle eggs in purgatory, Za’atar fruit fattoush, Chorizo and Merguez sausages, Spicy Scotch eggs, Paradise cauliflower soup, Yuki Gomi’s Spicy ramen, Bourride (a French fish soup), Mouclade (lightly curried mussels also from France), Li Ling Wang’s Mapo tofu, Bún riêu (a Vietnamese noodle soup), Lara Lee’s Sambal goreng tempe, Domi-yangnyeom-gui (a Korean fried fish dish), Blackened fish (southern US-style), Maunika Gowardhan’s Punjabi chicken curry, Nanjing salted duck, Doro wat (an Ethiopian spiced stew), Annie Grey’s 18th century English chicken curry, Juniper-brined roast chicken, Babi guling (a Balinese roast pork dish), Barbecue ribs, Zuza Zak’s Bigos (a Polish winter stew), and Pastilla (a North African filo pastry pie). In terms of equipment, he recommends an electric spice grinder over a mortar and pestle for most recipes (though not all). Mark Diacono shares the techniques at the heart of sourcing, blending and using spices well, enabling you to make delicious food that is as rewarding in the process as it is in the end result.Known for growing everything from Szechuan pepper to pecans to Asian pears, Mark's refreshing approach to growing and eating has done much to inspire a new generation to grow some of what they eat. The recipes build on bringing your spices alive – whether that’s creating blends to easily enhance your food when short of time on a weekday evening, or in infusing and blooming spices to bring out the very best of these treasured ingredients.

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