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cumin is common and critical in arab kitchens, and you're often setting the tone with it, not just the flavor. before anything hits the heat, the cumin goes in (with the umami). that’s how i would start, and how i was taught to start. an oiled pan, a spoon of ground cumin, and maybe a few seeds. this builds the dish from the ground up because cumin is the spice that almost anything can settle into after it blooms, from hearty stews to morning eggs (with a lot of garlic), threading its way through generations of home cooking. it sharpens and gives shape to meals, and it’s this earthy line that marks where one flavor ends and another begins.
smelling it reminds me of foods that we leaned on during long, cold winter nights in amman, like shorbat adas (lentil soup) or ful (slow-cooked fava beans), or even eggs over medium lightly seasoned with cumin and fried in olive oil. how simple and efficient that way of eating is can be defining in a way, because it's a flavor that so many of us grew up tasting before we even had the words to name it, like "nutty, earthy, and warm". and it featured often enough in everyday cooking, some foods more obviously than others, that that we were always subconsciously making the association that cumin is us, and those foods are home.
and it does something really special too, which is that it binds other spices together, deepens broths, and lifts up vegetables and proteins. it pulls flavors into balance without demanding too much attention, like an organizer of taste.
when teta nahla, our sister restaurant, was operational as a test kitchen, we served a simple lentil soup that uses just a few ingredients. the center of which, obviously, was cumin. this shorbat adas is the kind of soup i grew up eating - richly savory with onion, warm with cumin (and a lot of care), and bright with the optional lemon squeeze. here's the recipe below:
shorbat adas (red lentil soup)
this is one of the realest meals in existence, and is shared by so many across asia (with its many variations). and because cumin deserves its own moment in a dish that wouldn’t be the same without it.
ingredients:
500g red lentils (soaked for 20min)
4 qts vegetable stock
45g salt
4 tsp cumin
1 tsp turmeric
2 tsp aleppo pepper
1 onion (small dice)
300g potato (medium dice)
300g carrot (medium dice)
200g EVOO
prep:
1. put 1 tsp of cumin, the onions and EVOO in a pot and saute until onions are browned
2. add the rest of the spices, potato, carrot, and saute for 1 minute.
3. put lentils, vegetable stock, and salt in the pot, bring to a boil and let simmer until lentils and potatoes are tender. make sure to stir constantly so it doesn't burn.
4. put everything in a blender and blend until smooth before straining.
(optional) top with shawarmaji shatta.
this is one of those reliable recipes that you can make with very minimal pantry ingredients and still feed people well. the kind of meal your mom, or your uncle, or your grandmother would pull together with whatever was around but that would really hit the spot.
these unassuming but deeply influential figures in our average lives are what my spice memoirs have really been about. i've been trying to document something that honors the cooks who made kitchens the places you wanted to be in as a kid, and who made meals for us that were clearly their love manifest.
a steady hand in the kitchen
it makes me happy, to say the least, that we have the ability to offer both whole cumin seeds and freshly ground cumin at shawarmaji. sometimes you want the burst and crackle of a toasted seed blooming in oil, and sometimes you just need the ground, earthy base to carry a dish home. and it's important to us to source these spices from their native lands so that you're getting a sensory experience that's as authentic and preserved as possible to the aromas, aromatics, and flavors that you would get if you were harvesting them yourself. i feel this way about everything we're able to share with you all, but for me things that have vivid memories attached to them hit and feel even better when shared.
thank you to every one of you who continually support our small family business, allow me to share my musings, and give me the opportunity to live my dream by serving our community the food that i love (and live) to eat.
peace, love, and toum,
chef mohammad abutaha
