The Spice Must Flow

Beyond fiber arts, another passion of mine is feeding people. It is more than just cooking. I love being able to prepare something that is nourishing to body and soul, more than just sustenance. Thus my involvement in the reinvigoration of the Malagentia Cook's Guild. 

We have seen many examples of how food breaks down barriers and shared meals strengthen the bonds between us. When someone cooks for you, you get a window into their past. It's not always pleasant, but it is always revealing. I've taken lead on preparing food for a small event and I'm putting my heart out there.

The event is Harvest Moon, and the task sounded simple enough: prep a couple harvest themed stews. As I moved forward, budgetary constraints shifted the focus to a peasant style pottage meal. I landed on a blog that described their interpretations of 2 easy dishes from the text The Forme Curry. The pottages seemed straight forward enough, but I kept getting stuck on the mystery ingredient: poudre douce. 

Poudre Douce translates to "sweet powder" and I got stuck on the notion of putting sugar in a cabbage soup. I did a survey of dozens of recipes for this powder. Most recipes included cinnamon and clove. Some had ginger or nutmeg, and sugar. The focus on the warming spices reminded me of my earlier "secret" ingredient for my pomegranate meatballs: garam masala. As I kept digging, I came across an article that supported my theory that this sweet powder was a cousin of garam masala - and it's likely that every house has their own version. 

For my blend, I built it around bay laurel for a highly emotional reason. My spouse's name translates to "crowned with laurel" and we had a twelve foot garland of bay laurel leaves draped over the arch where we were married. Add on that we were married on the Summer Solstice and these leaves were left out in that glorious longest daylight. There is no way for these leaves not to be imbued with magic. I have been using the leaves as often as possible. All of my soups and stocks are made with them- and likely will be for a while. 12 feet is a LOT of leaves when you use less than four at a time! 

So I am sharing a bit of magic and the tiniest fraction of love I have for this human. I'll have ingredient lists printed for everything I'm making, and I'll have a hard time not listing "magic". 

Here is the recipe I settled on:

15g cinnamon sticks (not cassia chunks)
10g powdered ginger
4g whole cloves
4g bay laurel leaves

Combine whole spices in spice grinder and mill to a fine powder. Add powdered ginger and continue milling to work out all chunks. 

I wanted to see how it would go sweet and savory so I tried 1/4 tsp in a couple tablespoons of olive oil, and 1 tsp with a stick of butter and 4 tbls of honey. Both were divine and my spouse devoured the first sample of honey-butter before we could sit down to dinner. It's so, so good!