Daily prompt: Ring of fire

Tags

cooking, paella, postaday2014, spice

Do you love hot and spicy foods or do you avoid them for fear of what tomorrow might bring?

I love spicy foods, albeit not necessarily hot, spicy should not have to mean feeling as if your mouth is on fire or that the skin inside your mouth is peeling off. I love spice such as how nutmeg spikes up the flavor profile of spinach or the way it gives added depth to béchamel sauce. Cinnamon is another spice that perks up a variety of dishes, it is a secret ingredient in my husband’s chili; I can spill this little secret because there are a few more secrets to his chili, one slip won’t be the end of the world.

Saffron is another lovely spice that brings so much to the plate and the table; it is one of the key ingredients in my paella and I love adding it to my sautéed cauliflower.

One of the most exciting discoveries that I have made about spices is how beneficial they are to our overall health. Turmeric has been shown to have great effects on brain health, cinnamon has excellent antioxidant properties and nutmeg just has to have medicinal properties, just think of how wonderful you feel after eating pumpkin pie, it must be the nutmeg, I’m sure of it.

Just the thought of cooking without pepper, salt, cayenne, oregano, paprika or any other spice, leaves me bereft of joy and anticipation; where would all of the fun be without spices and the experimentation and individuality of spicing something up?

Spices have been in our culinary history for eons and we are so very lucky for it.

Saffron

Tags

cooking, crocus, postaday2012, saffron, spice

I am rewriting this post because I have just lost everything that I had just written, the screen froze and everything on the screen vanished. I was writing about saffron, one of my favorite spices and how because I ran out of another spice, I decided to try saffron in its place. Normally whenever the mood strikes me for cauliflower, I finely chop two onions and mince five cloves of garlic, sauté them in olive oil slowly over low heat until they are very soft. That is when I add the head of a cauliflower that I have cut into very small pieces. At this point, turmeric would be making its presence known in the mix but I had forgotten that I had used up the last of it last month. I enjoy cauliflower very much but I think that it needs something more than just kosher salt and black pepper, so what to add since I don’t have turmeric? This is where the saffron fits into the essay, an interesting point in itself because the word essay is French for try or attempt, I added a quarter of a cup of chicken stock to the pan, increased the heat to medium and added a heaping tablespoon of saffron threads. I left the mixture to simmer for fifteen minutes and I reduced the heat back to low for ten more minutes. When it was done, the color was so vibrant, it could have been part of a floral color palette, yellowy/orange. It was delicious, I was so very happy with how the different flavors wound themselves around each other and still kept themselves distinguishable from each other. I found that the saffron made for a smoother flavor component than the turmeric, I’m not saying that I won’t be using turmeric with the cauliflower anymore. The benefits linked to turmeric are substantial especially for your brain. At this point any little bit of help with my brain is most welcome.

Besides being one of my favorite flavors, my other favorite is vanilla, these two spices come directly from flowering plants. Saffron is harvested from the crocus and vanilla from the orchid. Both are so very expensive because due to the delicate nature of the plants, they need to be harvested by hand. I think that it is wonderful that in this modern world of ours, there are still things that are too delicate for the cold steel of machinery and still need the warm touch of a human hand.