Eleanor Ford

Winner Next Generation Indie Book Award for Best CookbookWinner Next Generation Indie Book Award for Best Overall Design Celebrating the love story between sugar and spice, this stunning new volume from award-winning cookbook author Eleanor Ford presents eighty spice-infused recipes for desserts and baked goods and a guide to spice switches so you can master classic flavor combinations and open the door to new possibilities. Spice is often the party girl: the loud, bold, exuberant element in the mix. When married with sugar, spice can provide a delicate fragrance that gives backbone to a dish and deepens its allure. Just as a generous swirl of woody-sweet cinnamon elevates a simple bun, a fiery gingerbread is a wonder in the mouth, nutmeg cuts through the sweet creaminess of custard to make a more rounded tart, and a whisper of cardamom makes poached plums jaunty and interesting. As international spice expert Eleanor Ford shows in A Whisper of Cardamom, flavors can be enhanced by a thoughtful addition from the spice drawer--added not in shouts, but in whispers. With her signature blend of curiosity and exploration, Eleanor returns with another brilliant study of spice that will help you infuse elegance and complexity into sweet treats. Divided into flavor profiles like bright and zippy, floral and fragrant, and dark and spicy, A Whisper of Cardamom is a cookbook designed to inspire creativity and experimentation. In addition to eighty recipes for sweets such as saffron macaroons, roast strawberry souffl s, and violet cream chocolate pots, spice swaps will help you customize dishes and discover worlds of flavors, and exquisite, inspiring photos are throughout.

This is a love story between sugar and spice. Spice is often the party girl, the loud, bold, exuberant element in the mix. There is also another art, more subtle yet equally seductive. Married with sugar, spice can provide a delicate fragrance, hard to put your finger on but one that gives backbone to a dish. It can balance tartness and bring sweetness so you can tone down the sugar. Flavours can be enhanced by a thoughtful addition from the spice cupboard, making chocolate more chocolatey and fruit taste more of itself. Added not in shouts, but in whispers, an intrigue of spice deepens allure. In this book, we explore how to unlock flavours, and how to marry them to make much more than the sum of their parts. Floral and fruity spices pair well with rich fats. Warming spices like ginger and clove play off treacly brown sugar. Anise sweetens, lemony coriander seed brightens and herbaceous notes pick out complexity in chocolate. A suspicion of nutmeg cuts the sweet creaminess of custard for a more rounded tart, and a whisper of cardamom makes inky poached plums jaunty and interesting. Chapters are divided by taste to guide you towards a dessert or bake that is bright and zippy, floral and fragrant, or dark and spicy. Recipes include spice switches so you can be creative and playful with your combinations. For those with an eye to expanding their repertoire, there are helpful spice-matching features and flavour wheels to inspire. A whole world of inviting new flavours awaits.

Award-winning writer Eleanor Ford's recipes and stories explore how centuries of spice trading and cultural diffusion changed the world's cuisine. 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.

*Winner of two Gourmand World Cookbook Awards**Best International or Regional Cookbook, Guild of Food Writers*"What a deep dive this is into the world of spice. . . . And then the recipes Recipes which allow the reader to travel from Asia to the Middle East along the spice route, taking in so much flavor and so much context on the way." --Yotam OttolenghiThrough 80 spice-infused recipes, spectacular images, and a mouthwatering culinary journey along the ancient spice trail, award-winning author Eleanor Ford's luscious new volume reveals how centuries of spice trading and cultural diffusion changed the world's cuisine and how to best stock and enjoy spices in your own home. From humankind's earliest travels, people have followed and sought out the spice routes. These maritime trading trails acted as the central nervous system of the world, enabling the flow of goods and ideas. In this richly illustrated volume, Eleanor Ford uses recipes as maps as she takes readers on a culinary journey that weaves through history and around the world. She explores both the flavor profiles and the spread of spices--from cardamom to cinnamon, ginger to sumac--and provides fascinating insights such as how nutmeg unites the spice blends Indian garam masala, Lebanese seven spice, French quatre epices, Moroccan ras el hanout, and Middle Eastern baharat, lending its bittersweet, fragrant warmth to them all. This unparalleled volume provides 80 flavorful recipes for entrees, appetizers, sides dishes, and more, enabling you to make a divine garlic clove vegetable curry, jasmine tea-smoked chicken, Indonesian seafood gulai, as well as staple spice pastes and mixtures to have on-hand. The result will enable you to stock up and to have a home kitchen rich in international flavor and fragrance.

Steep verdant rice terraces, ancient rainforest and fire-breathing volcanoes create the landscape of the world's largest archipelago. Indonesia is a travellers' paradise, with cuisine as vibrant and thrilling as its scenery. For these are the original spice islands, whose fertile volcanic soil grows ingredients that once changed the flavour of food across the world. On today's noisy streets, chilli-spiked sambals are served with rich noodle broths, and salty peanut sauce sweetens chargrilled sate sticks. In homes, shared feasts of creamy coconut curries, stir-fries and spiced rice are fragrant with ginger, tamarind, lemongrass and lime. The air hangs with the tang of chilli and burnt sugar, citrus and spice. Eleanor Ford gives a personal, intimate portrait of a country and its cooking, the recipes exotic yet achievable, and the food brought to life by stunning photography.

Over hundreds of years, various ethnic groups have passed through Samarkand, sharing and influencing each other's cuisine and leaving their culinary stamp. This book is a love letter to Central Asia and the Caucasus, containing personal travel essays and recipes little known in the West that have been expertly adapted for the home cook.