Spice: Flavors of the Eastern Mediterranean. / Ana Sortun. New York, N.Y.: William Morrow, 2006.
The first part of Spice was reviewed on this blog “If spice is Your Muse…”
Now with knowledge of your three favorite spices, Sortun’s got more chapters on chiles, seeds, powdered spices like turmeric, and the dried leaves usually known as herbs: mints, parlsey, basil, thyme, rosemary and sage, and also the flowers we eat! The book is a real treasury of flavors, and not to be missed fantasy recipe collection that’ll make a spice believer of you!
It’s more about how much hot spice you can handle—what vegetables will take the heat of your chiles, and which dishes will you prefer to be as hot as chile-hot. Did you know that chiles have deep flavor, and notes of sweetness, caramel, smokiness, even chocolate — tastes that go beyond mere heat?
As chiles go, dairy is enormously complimentary to our taste buds—so that leaves out vegan, right? Not exactly—you can start with cashew cream, adding the chiles to suit. Cashew cream is pretty versatile and can be seasoned due to its accomdatingly mild flavor. Otherwise, coconut milk can be the canvas for exploring chiles.
Sortun’s recipe for Whipped Feta with Aleppo, Urfa & Paprika features not one but three chiles. Why so many? She says of Aleppo that it’s earthy, slightly art or sour with a “hint of sweet”. And of Urfa chiles that they are “bitter like coffee or chocolate and sweet like molasses”. Summing up the chile factor would be earthy, sour, sweet and bitter, capturing at least four of the six tastes. Paprika has sweet, maybe even caramel flavor and the spice is made from only the flessh of the fruit, no seeds or stems, so the results is a pure fruit flavor not as harshly searing as a really hot pepper.
Two of Sortun’s recipes with peppers can be tried right off, without vegan substitutions for meat or dairy! They are for Harissa (a chile paste from North African traditions) and Muhammara (a Middle-Eastern sauce that I loved at first bite!). Muhammara is a spicey chunky sauce composed of breadcrumbs, walnuts, olive oil, tomatoes, and chile peppers. Sortun’s recipe combines red bell peppers and two kinds of chiles, pomegranate molasses, and cumin, garlic and scallions.
We use garlic, onions and scallions or shallots as vegetables as well as spice. Although chiles are grown in the Europe and the Middle East, dishes that capitalize on the chile or pepper as a vegetable are not well-known in the West except in ethnic groceries. There you’ll find red peppers prepared as a condiment. I bet homemade would be an awesome and fun change of pace. For the red peppers you would roast them, blackening their skins. Then sweat them in a tightly closed paper bag. When cooled, scrape off the charred skin with a knife or fork. Then create a delicious side dish of peppers, olive oil and vinegar, garlic and herbs of your choosing. Middle Eastern tapas or mezze consist of many small dishes like this.
I can’t get enough of Ana Sortun’s Spice! It presents the flavors as complex dishes you can whip up in your home kitchen. Some of the flavors are exotic and you’ll notice that many feature meat and dairy. Don’t let that stop you! The book is a source of ideas for a variety of vegetarian, even vegan menus. And dreams of even more ways to combine vegetables and legumes with spice are there in ethnic recipes, modified for the American palate.
As an end note, to boost your appreciation for these plant foods as medicinal, Aggarwal (recently reviewed Healing Spices) has plenty to offer on the spices we call chile.
A discussion of chile peppers is where Rebecca Wood’s “The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia” really shines. She mentions the heat in chiles as a result of the growing climate and seed lineage among other attributes that make one chile hotter, another one sweeter and milder.
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