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| Cilantro Seeds Photo: Butterfly Kitchen See link in Still Curious? section, below. |
Herbs and spices can be a challenge. It isn't that they aren't here; it's just that searching for them with their Spanish names is often daunting. On the upside, I've discovered that crushing herbs with my small wooden mortar and pestle—rather than crushing them with my finger in the palm of my hand—releases the herbs' fragrances in a most pleasing way.
Then there are the recipes that produce multiple challenges. I had one this week. I had made a big pot of garbanzo beans. On an impulse I'd also bought half of a HUGE squash, which I'd baked and pureed hoping I could use it as a substitute for sugar pumpkin. Short answer: it is scrumptious in Pumpkin Bread!
Looking for a dinner option, I googled the ingredients. Up came a promising Chicken-Pumpkin-Garbanzo Goulash. So far so good. I sauteed onions and chicken in a little oil. The seasonings were easy: 1 teaspoon each of cinnamon, ginger and cumin; and 1 tablespoon of coriander. Oops. Coriander?
Just so I don't leave the cooks hanging, the recipe also calls for a couple of cups of diced tomatoes—I did mention that I use all fresh ingredients, didn't I? I use plum tomatoes, no additives, no preservatives...delicious. And pumpkin. I used a cup of the squash puree that I'd made, but chunks of baked pumpkin could also be used—actually, I'll try that next.
Served over couscous, the recipe was okay without coriander, but definitely lacked pizazz! Time to start looking.
Day 2: Getting Started
My first stop was the dictionary: Coriander is coriandro in Spanish. So far, so good—or so I thought. But a thorough search of the spice shelves at the supermarket yielded nothing, so I quizzed the young woman who stocks the spices. She'd never heard of coriandro. The hunt was on!
While I was in the produce area, I asked the man stacking cucumbers the same question. He kind of looked around, then sotto voce told me, "We don't have them. Go to the abarrotes (little grocery stores), they'll have them."
Confused, I asked, "In the mercado?" His smile lit up the area, "Yes, that's right."
I smothered a smile as I thought of our good friend in Pátzcuaro whose reply to the query, "Where can we buy...?" was unfailingly "En el mercado" (in the market). It became a standing joke among the three of us.
When I got home, I emailed my longtime friend from Mexico City, who now lives with her family in the United States. From her I learned that coriander is the seed of cilantro:
"Ask for semilla de cilantro," she urged me, "in the herb section of the mercado." I sighed...yet again...está en el mercado...believe me, Mexico's market tradition goes back millenia...way before the Spanish arrived, and it is alive and well!Curious, I googled cilantro and learned that cilantro leaves (used in Mexico even more than parsley is used in the U.S.) and its seeds deliver two entirely different flavors. But how on earth would I roast the seeds?
A Canadian friend who winters in Ajijic, Mexico, is a gourmet cook. So I emailed her, asking if I could persuade her to bring me coriander when she comes in a week. She demurred in favor of my finding cilantro seeds.
"It's easy," she wrote, "just clean up the seeds, dry roast them and grind them in your coffee grinder. Your coriander will be much fresher than any I can bring." This was starting to get interesting.Day 3: Our Local Mercado, Perhaps?
On my way out, I happened into our building administrator, Doña Carlota, who is a wealth of information. I believe she's on a mission to wean me from the 'super' (supermarket). Each time I make a discovery of something else I can buy in our local market, she nods approvingly while commenting, "Now you're learning."
The truth is that every week, I buy more products locally. So I asked Carlota if I might find cilantro seeds in our local mercado—a block and a half away. Carlota was doubtful. As we chatted, it became obvious that she didn't know anything about cilantro seeds.
Mindful of the advice of both my long-time friend and the produce clerk ("go to the mercado"), my next thought was the Tianguis de Sábado, the open-air market held each Saturday on a street about a 10-minute walk from our apartment. The Tianguis is a rich source of all kinds of food stuffs: beans, chiles, fresh fruits and vegetables, so it seemed natural that they might have coriander as well.
Day 4: Saturday Open-Air Market
When I arrived at the Tianguis, I began looking for the herb lady, but she wasn't there that week, so I proceeded to the stall where I buy the sinfully-delicious almond-chocolate mole (delicious over baked chicken breasts), dried cranberries, granola (amaranth, sunflower seeds, various nuts, naturally sweetened) and ALL my beans (black, garbanzos, May and June beans—similar to pinto beans, but harvested in the named months).
As I was leaving, I spotted plastic bags of natural (unrefined) sugar. So I bought a two kilo [four pound] bag for 25 pesos [US$1.89]. One more item bought locally. Carlota would be pleased.
I'd begun to walk up the street when I remembered the cilantro seeds, so I stopped at a produce stand featuring a large display of greens. The vendor greeted my query with disinterest, but his customer lit up and told me to go to the stall that sells chiles: "They have them."
I had to laugh. It was the same stall I'd just left, and the vendor's wife laughed when I came back for a third purchase. She told me that she hadn't brought cilantro seeds this week, but she'd have them next week.
Day 6: Local Mercado Churubusco
Tonita and her husband, Armando, must have searched for a full five minutes. I'd about given up, when approached the counter with a plastic bag full of a seeds.
"How much do you want?" he asked.I had no idea, so I tentatively replied, "Medio?"
He looked at me as if I'd suddenly developed an embarrassing tic, then tactfully suggested, "I'll measure out 100 grams, and you can decide."
Keep in mind that I still struggle with the metric system. I know that a kilo is roughly two pounds (2.2 pounds, to be exact). I'm comfortable with cuarto (1/2 pound) and medio (1 pound). I felt quite proud recently when I heard a woman ask for tres cuartos (pound and a half) and realized the utility of tres cuartos, but grams...to ounces???
I had little clue how to respond, but I can now definitively state that 100 grams [3.5 ounces] of cilantro seed is, of course, more than I'll be able to use in about a hundred years. Maybe I can take some seeds up to our daughters.
When I got home, I realized that I had no idea how to dry roast the seeds. So I checked the Internet...and an entirely new world opened before me!!!
"The Taste of Conquest" immediately pops into my mind. It's a fascinating account of the role the spice trade played in the Europeans' explorations of the world. My former next-door neighbor in Connecticut is not only a voracious reader, but an incurably curious one as well—and a superb cook, often using ingredients she's grown in her garden. So when she recommended this history of the spice trade, I knew it would be good.
The role of pimiento (pepper, capsicum) in global exploration is especially interesting, but cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cumin, nutmeg and allspice were all important items of global trade—and many spices are seeds that are dry roasted then ground to a powder or even mashed with mortar and pestle.
I had indeed hit the jackpot with the web search. What I found are several sites that discuss dry roasting of a whole variety of seeds, starting with—you guessed it—coriander and cumin, two of the ingredients in my recipe.
Day 7: Coriander the Old-Fashioned Way by Roasting and Grinding Cilantro Seeds
Finding coriander had now morphed into a cross-cultural effort spanning the ENTIRE North American Continent: Mexico, United States and Canada. Gotta love it.
Back home, the next task was separating good seeds from the inevitable twigs and seed husks. After a laboriously slow start, I found that if I spread a couple of tablespoons of the seeds on a piece of wax paper and nudged them with a dinner knife, the good seeds would roll easily and could be herded by the knife into a custard dish. It took awhile, but eventually I had separated about half the seeds.
Next I got out and heated my faithful Calphalon deep skillet, tossed in the seeds and stirred them continuously for about five or six minutes while I waited for them to release their fragrance. Then I emptied them back into the custard dish to cool before grinding them in the coffee grinder.
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| Coriander: Roasted and Ground Cilantro Seeds Photo: Butterfly Kitchen |
People sometimes ask us, "But what do you do in Mexico?" Perhaps this post gives a few hints. !Buen provecho! Bon appetite!
Still Curious?
Related Jenny post: Saturday Market in Coyoacán.
How to Dry Roast Coriander Seeds (nee Cilantro Seeds). I also read that spice seeds are available in Natural Food Stores.
From AllRecipes.com Chicken-Garbanzo Bean-Pumpkin Goulash. After I'd already published, I decided to include the recipe. When I searched, I found all kinds of wonderful combinations, including a Tunisian adaptation that looks promising.
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