Yemeni & the Gulf · Sauce
Hawaij lil Shorba
- Easy
- 10 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with an earthy, grounding base, warm spice humming through the middle, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 40 g cumin seed
- 25 g black peppercorns
- 15 g coriander seed
- 10 g green cardamom pods, husks discarded
- 4 cloves
- 8 g ground turmeric
The skills inside
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Dry toast the cumin, coriander, peppercorns and cloves in an unoiled pan over medium heat, shaking constantly, until the cumin darkens one shade and the smell turns nutty rather than green, 2 to 3 minutes. 3 min
- Tip them straight onto a cold plate; left sitting in the hot pan they carry on cooking and go acrid.
- Crack the cardamom pods, discard the husks, and grind the seeds with the cooled spices to a fine powder, sieving and regrinding the tailings so no pepper grit survives.
- Stir the turmeric through the cold ground spice and store airtight, in the dark.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts 70 recipes
- A single layer on dry metal with nothing added: no fat, and nothing else sharing the pan or the tray and competing for the heat.
- It is kept moving: shaken, stirred, or turned. Anything left still scorches on the face touching the metal while the rest of it is barely warm.
- It is judged by smell before sight: once it is fragrant there are seconds left, not minutes, and the nose reaches that point well before the colour does.
- It leaves the pan the instant it is done, onto a cold surface. A hot pan keeps toasting whatever stays in it, and carryover here is the difference between done and ruined.
- The colour is even and light rather than patchy, with nothing black at the edges: one scorched piece taints the whole quantity it is ground into.
Where it goes wrong It was left alone for a moment while something else was attended to. Dry heat has no margin: the pieces against the metal go from fragrant to acrid inside a minute, and the bitterness cannot be picked back out of a ground mixture.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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