Calvin's Weblog

Cumin: My new favorite spice... but with a side effect

Over the last week I've been cooking a lot of 'worldly' meals, and there's one thing they all have had in common: Cumin.
Sure, lots of other cool spices too, like turmeric, coriander, cyan, allspice, chili, etc - but no matter what else you add, if there's cumin, it's dominant.

A week ago it started when I made Puerco Pibil - a slow roasted pork dish from the Yucatan... the adept may recal this as being the dish that was so good, it made Jonny Depp kill the cook in Once Upon a Time in Mexico - Trust me, it really IS that good.

Next, when all the pork was gone (like, a day later) I made Picadillo Chimichangas, and they were awesome! Think of a regular beef chimichanga, but throw in some roasted apple, cinnamon, and raisins. It's really gooooooood... I guess I was on a bit of a Mexican trip, or maybe I was just trying to toughen up my guts for our trip to Cancun in a couple days...

Anyway, my next triumph (Sunday) was Aloo Gobi, an Indian potato and cauliflower dish with lots of cumin.... yummmm!
I followed that up with a couple of loaves of traditional Italian Olive Bread - which had no cumin... so that was strange... but there was an entire roasted red onion and a jar of olives in two loaves, so again, awesome, awesome, awesome... but no cumin.

Realizing that I had gone a day without cumin, last night I made an absolutely killer Moroccan Chicken (which of course had cumin) on a bed of rice - with the extra sauce drizzled all over. Oh, yum. Let me tell ya - dat's some good shitte lad. There's enough leftovers for dinner tonight, but I still am planning on cooking anyway - Carole has been bugging my to make my famous Greek Dolmades again, so that's what I'm going to do. I wonder how they'd turn out if I replaced that pinch of cinnamon with a pinch of cumin - LOL.

So... the side effect... My house, my car, my clothes, my office, my body itself... everything around me smells like a bus load of Abbotsford berry pickers. That stuff just leaches out of your pours! I smell like a curry house, and I haven't even used curry in any of my dishes! Revelation: that smell? It's cumin, not curry... and it does NOT go away without a fight. Don't get me wrong - at first, I loved it - it's an amazing spice - I kept going to the cupboard and opening the bag of cumin just to get another whiff... it's THAT enticing. But when you come home from work, open the front door and realize that that same smell is oozing out of your walls, it's a different story all together.

The moral? Like anything else so decadent, use sparingly. Indulge once every month or so, and let the air clear before indulging again.

PS - if anybody wants my recipes, let me know - I'm actually thinking of putting together a small cookbook of all my favorite stuff some day, but for now I'm still in the 'trying something new' phase. Two old staples that everyone know and love, are my (in)famous Potato Salad, and my Sunday Morning Crepes - but one new favorite, that I plan on making A LOT, is the Puerco Pibil (called Cochinita Pibil to the locals).

Posted by Calvin at April 21, 2004 08:00 AM