Richly scented dishes that smell as good as they taste
On the bottom of each storage jar is a row of numbers, written in black felt-tip pen, that marks the best-before date of the contents. Sometimes, I tear the date from the packet instead and tuck it inside the jar. It’s like finding a hidden message in your ground spice, a secret note that tells you the turmeric is getting on a bit or that the allspice berries have been there since before the pandemic.
I sorted out the spice jars this week, popping their air-tight seals and breathing in deeply. It’s a succession of smells which, in a heartbeat, will take you to Scandinavia or Kerala, Lebanon or Provence. I tossed the elderly aniseed and the ancient caraway, struggling to remember when I last made biscotti or seed cake. Others sent me straight to the kitchen – whole cumin seeds, chilli flakes and ground coriander found their way into a tomato sauce for fried florets of cauliflower; whole coriander seeds and turmeric (the latter a little past the date of its predicted demise) into a coconut sauce for shiitake mushrooms.
