Cardamom. Little pods that will lift your dish with fresh citrusy aroma…

It was maybe more then 5 years ago when I encountered with this amazing spice. I wanted to prepare pumpkin spice cheesecake and in the recipe cardamom was included. I didn’t have it back then, I just started with more serious cooking and I was intrigued. I went to spice store, now my favorite one, and rest is history…

As I already said, my connection with cardamom and regular use of this spice begin 5 years ago, maybe even more. I must admit that mostly I use it in desserts where I need this ginger/lemon/citrus note. However cardamom can be combined with meat or even with rice. Just add cardamom pods to your dishes like you add bay leaf. You can use them whole or you can crush pods to extract more flavor/ but be careful. It is a strong spice. Get to know it first.

Cardamom is related to ginger family. There are 3 varieties of cardamom. Each of them containing about 20 highly aromatic seeds. When you open them you can see how fresh they are. The stickier seeds are, the fresher they are. Regarding variety of cardamom pods there are bleached white, smokier black and golden-green cardamom.

Green cardamom contains aromas of lemon, sweet eucalyptus and peppery pine while black cardamom is more fuscous flavor, smokier flavor.

How to store cardamom? If you have cardamom pods you can easily store it for up to 2 years. When left in their pods, cardamom seeds will retain their flavor and potency.

RECIPE

Interesting touch to black Turkish coffee. Historically it was sign of respect towards the guest to present cardamom which will be served in his/hers coffee.

Cardamom coffee

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Ingredients

• 1 cup of water

• 2 full tsp. of ground coffee

• 1 tsp of sugar

• 3 pods of green cardamom (for intense flavor crush the pods)

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Directions

• Pour the water in smallest pot you have. I use Turkish coffee pot.
• Heat the water just up to boiling point.
• Remove from the heat, add coffee, sugar and cardamom pods. Stir and bring it back to heat. leave it until it boils (coffee foam will start to raise). Remove it from the stove and serve immediately.