"cardamom" news and stories

Curry powder is actually a mix of spices -- most of which you may have at home.

By adding ground spices to coffee beans, you can add excitement to your daily brew.

After becoming acquainted with Indian cuisine, the first thing I bought were green cardamom pods and I had absolutely no idea what to do with them. You may know the taste of cardamom, if you've ever sipped a chai latte but cardamom is also used in many savory Indian dishes including curries, pulaos and fritters.

Cardamom comes in two varieties, black and green (which is much easier to find). Black cardamom, which has a dark and musty flavor, is used for breads and potato dishes in Nordic countries as well as in India. Green cardamom, which is also called the "true" cardamom, can have a pungent menthol overtone that some people mistake for mint in my cardamom chocolate chip ice cream.

Here are simple ways to experiment with cardamom:

• Adding 1/2 teaspoon ground green cardamom to ground coffee for a Turkish-inspired treat.


• Cardamom pairs well with dried apricots. Try adding both to an oatmeal raisin cookie recipe -- 1/2 teaspoon cardamom along with 1/4 cup chopped apricots.


• Mash your next batch of mashed sweet potatoes with a little orange juice and 1/4 teaspoon cardamom.


• Make a luscious chai latte with green cardamom pods.

Find The Skinny Chef's recipe for Indian Fried Rice with Cardamom after the jump.

After typing a post about a wasabi popsicle, I started to think about other spice and and ice combinations. Naturally, I thought of cardamom, one of my favorite spices. A friend of mine recently suggested that we make cardamom ice cream. Unlike wasabi, cardamom is widely used in both savory and sweet dishes, such as rice and pastries. Its deeply aromatic qualities have always attracted me. And now, I'm dying with curiosity to find out its potential with ice cream.

Below are a few recipes you can try at home:

• Pear and cardamom sorbet
• Rose-cardamom ice cream
• Cardamom ice cream
• Cardamom-pistachio ice cream
• Vanilla cardamom ice cream

If any of you have tried cardamom ice cream before, I'd love to find out what it tastes like. Please let me know!

I first made this dessert last spring and it's quickly become one of my favorites. It appeared in the March 2005 issue of Gourmet Magazine in an article about the London restaurant Moro.

Bring 2 cups of freshly made espresso (I use Bustello) to a boil with 1 teaspoon sugar, 20 whole cardamom pods, lightly crushed, and 1 3-inch cinnamon stick, broken in half. Add coffee to two cups pitted Medjool dates in a heat-proof bowl. Cool, cover and refrigerate overnight. Serve dates and espresso syrup over Greek yogurt or plain yogurt that has drained in a paper-towel-lined sieve for one hour.

[Photo: Nick Vagnoni]