Spice up your menu

• Published date: 01 October 2022

A unique and enlightening guide to cooking with spice, the book looks at their flavour profiles and how they can be used, combined and layered — how some bring sweetness, others fragrance, heat, pungency, sourness or earthiness

There are 80 spice-infused recipes in this collection following the trails of ancient maritime trade through Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Iran and the Emirates.

Eleanor combines historical research with a travel writer’s eye and a cook’s nose for a memorable recipe.

Interwoven are stories that explore how spices from across the Indian Ocean — the original cradle of spice — have, over time, been adopted into cuisines around the world.

GRIDDLED PITA STUFFED with SUMAC-SPICED MEAT A wonderful addition to the kebab culinary canon and a reversal of the usual order of things, as meat is wedged into pita bread before being griddled. In Arabic, arayes means ‘brides’ and here she is, the delicately spiced filling, enveloped in the arms of her groom, the bread. The marriage is undeniably burger-like but even quicker to prepare and with enticing sour and smoky notes from the sumac and paprika.

These kebabs work well made in advance and packed up to cook on a campfire, if you are that way inclined.

Ingredients450g beef or lamb mince

1 heaped Tbsp tomato paste (concentrated purée)

1 heaped Tbsp pine nuts...