Oh, the woeful, oft-regaled tale of the pantry loaded with jars of dusty spices. Ground nubbins of paprika, cumin, sage and black pepper that have moldered into flavorless, colored molecules.
The opening salvo of spice shop owner and author Lior Lev Sercarz’s book “Mastering Spice” is mighty: “I sometimes stage a spice intervention when someone asks me to evaluate the state of their spices,” he says. “You can do it yourself at home too. Put all your spices out on a table. Smell them, taste them. If they still have a strong smell and taste like something, keep them. Otherwise, toss them. They’re just powder.” His is a fresh, entitling way to think about how to use — and discard — one of the most potent tools in the kitchen arsenal.
Start with the spice stuff
After setting the stage for a vibrant collection of primed spices, Sercarz explains that when replenishing your supply, you should buy your spices from a high-quality purveyor, keep them in sight so you employ them regularly and toss them within a year of purchase.
Judicious advice. Even more expedient, perhaps, is how Sercarz thinks about combining spices to dynamic effect. Let us begin at the book’s end. There, he offers a collection of, as he calls them, master spice blends. Some examples include “for stirring into iced tea,” “for stirring into ketchup” and “for sprinkling over buttered hot toast.”
The mixture for those slabs of toasted bread is mind-altering. Sweet, citrusy coriander seeds are ground with the anise whisper of fennel seeds, then combined with flaky sea salt and the warm-chocolate edge of Urfa chiles. Breakfast never knew what was coming; it may never recover.
Building blocks, assembled
The majority of the book’s 250-plus pages is allocated to Sercarz’s version of theme and variations. Across six chapters — Vegetables; Pasta, Grains and Bread; Legumes and Eggs; Seafood; Meat; Dessert-ing — he presents a collection of centerpiece recipes, each of which is accompanied by four or five modifications of that core recipe.
Take his sweet potato puree. The main recipe necessitates a blend of cumin, dried garlic, caraway, ground ginger and cayenne blended into whirred sweet potatoes that have been sweetened with orange juice. Creamy, warming, invigorating.
Then, he shows you how to turn that same puree into a dip spiked with pumpkin seeds and jalapeños, and into a gratin hefty with walnuts and cheddar. Deviled eggs with paprika and ginger become goat cheese deviled eggs with sesame seeds become tuna and caper deviled eggs.
This is more than spice wizardry. This is how to anchor your kitchen thinking so those spices’ endless capabilities are able to electrify your recipes. Those jars, crowded with a fresh stockpile of rousing spices after a pantry refresh, are now road maps to shrewd cooking.