Beguiled in Santa Fe, after a glass of Prosecco
and a plate of green chile mashed potatoes at
OK, what is SpiceLines?
It’s my spice blog. It’s the place where you’ll discover absolutely everything about spices and good living.
How modest. And you are…?
Courtenay Beinhorn Dunk. Obsessive cook, style fanatic, avid traveler, reluctant writer, food photographer when the light is right.
So what will I find on SpiceLines?
Spicy recipes, interviews with chefs like Floyd Cardoz and Susana Trilling, reviews of irresistible books like Jame’s Oseland’s Cradle of Flavor, basics such as “How to Peel a Clove of Garlic.” There’s a growing section on tools of the trade—see our entries on Spice Grinders under $30 and the Best Peppermills. Check out Travel Diary for my trip to Vera Cruz. And there’s SpiceTales, an adventure story with episodes posted by Claire, when she feels like it.
Who is Claire?
A red-headed food writer whose impulsive marriage to an Italo-Indian plant hunter seems to have dead-ended in a murder. Now her husband has vanished and his identical twin brother has landed on her doorstep. Other than that, I don’t know much--except that her husband’s name is Marco Polo. You can check out all the episodes to date by clicking on SpiceTales under Categories.
What’s coming for 2007?
Better living through spices. Designer mortars and pestles. Forays into tropical gardening. How mustard heals burns and other entries on the science of spice. Ancient Japanese sea salt. Travel to Sweden, maybe Bhutan, certainly Paris. Vietnamese cookbooks.
How did SpiceLines get started?
I’ve loved spicy food forever. I grew up in San Antonio, which means that my friends and I cut our teeth on Tex-Mex: nachos with super-hot jalapenos, cheesy enchiladas with chile con carne, and oceans of salsa. But thanks to great cooks like Aurora Rodriguez and family trips to Mexico, I was also eating more authentic regional fare: delicately battered and fried chiles rellenos stuffed with picadillo, huachinango (redfish) a la veracruzana, and mole poblano with cinnamon-flavored chocolate and three or four kinds of chiles. Our kitchen sizzled with garlic and cumin. It’s an irresistible smell that makes me feel warm and happy, even today.
After college and film school, I moved to New York, worked on a couple of movies, and finally learned to cook. I discovered French, Japanese and Cuban food and wrote the occasional piece for Food & Wine and The New York Times. Then came the mesquite-grilling craze. Our family place was thick with mesquite and we had always used the wood for cooking, so I did a book—Beinhorn’s Mesquite Cookery—with recipes like Quail in Lime and Tequila that used the great food I grew up with as a starting point.
Mesquite was the '80's, right? Power suits and Boy George?
Excuse me. The ‘80s were a great decade. I spent ten years eating my way through Chinatown, reading every word M.F.K. Fisher ever wrote, writing about fine teas and Japanese appetizers, learning to cook stuff like sweetbreads and soufflés.
So what about spices?
The more I traveled, the more I noticed that spices and their flavors are global. It’s the local tastes that are different.
When I ate fish head curry in Singapore I could taste the earthiness of the cumin that flavors carrot salad in Morocco and tomatillo salsa in Mexico. In Paris at Ze Kitchen Galerie, William Ledeuil used flowery Tahitian vanilla to bring out the sea-sweet taste of perfectly fresh sea bass. In the West we think of cinnamon as a dessert spice, yet at La Maison Bleue in Fez, it was the dominant spice in a savory 14th century lamb and couscous dish.
Spices are everywhere?
They are the “lines,” if you will, that cross the globe and link people everywhere together. Dishes may taste different in Morocco and Mexico, or in the 14th and 21st centuries, but the flavor echoes are startlingly familiar. My hunch is that if we could sit down together at one table, we might be able to eat our way to understanding one another.
On a lighter note, what’s your favorite spice?
I adore pepper of all kinds—black, white, green. Black pepper goes onto almost everything, from smoked salmon and watermelon at breakfast to tonight’s martinis with pickled green tomatoes. Our house pepper is Indian Special Extra Bold Black Peppercorns from Penzeys—unbelievably fresh, big, explosive.
What’s your favorite pepper mill?
It’s the Atlas, which is modeled after a Greek coffee grinder that soldiers carried into the field. It’s tall and slender, made of copper, and has a crank top. When you grind, you can literally feel the mechanism pulverizing the peppercorns. It’s very satisfying and beautiful enough to go from the kitchen counter to the table. Bill and I are leaving one to each of our children in our wills.
What’s the most exotic spice you use?
At the moment, the most exotic spice I’m using is actually a Moroccan blend—ras el hanout, which means “top of the shop,” or the spice merchant’s best blend. Some friends shared a packet of whole spices that came from an herboriste in Marrakesh: it’s full of some extremely weird roots and seeds that none of us can identify, plus peppercorns, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon and galangal, which is related to ginger. It’s incredibly pungent and just a tiny pinch is enough to flavor whatever you’re cooking.
What’s in your kitchen library?
Probably 300 cookbooks. A complete set of Saveur. The first 90 issues of Simple Cooking, John Thorne’s exceptional food newsletter. Whenever I’m tempted to slough off, by example John holds me to a higher standard.
What books can’t you can’t live without?
Ian Hemphill’s Spice and Herb Bible. Ian is an Australian spice merchant who has literally spent his life in the spice and herb business. His book is really a wonderfully detailed encylopedia, plus it has entries on unfamiliar Australian seasonings like lemon myrtle and wattleseed.
And Harold Magee’s On Food and Cooking. The second edition has a great section on spices and their chemical make-up. It goes a long way towards explaining why pepper and cinnamon taste the way they do.
What’s your favorite piece of kitchen equipment?
That’s hard. There’s the mortar and pestle I lugged back from Singapore 12 years ago. It’s made of volcanic stone and is wonderful for grinding “wet” ingredients like fresh ginger and garlic, lemon grass, etc.
I really adore my tagine. It’s a two-piece earthenware cookpot from Marrakesh, made of a special clay from Ourika in the low Atlas mountains. You layer your food in the bottom and then simmer it over a low flame for a couple of hours. The conical top captures the steam and bastes the food while it’s cooking—all the flavors mingle and the dish becomes rich and aromatic. There’s a great recipe on SpiceLines for Chicken Tagine with Green Olives, Carrots and Preserved Lemon.
But I just got a sharkskin-covered wasabi grater. It is the most beautiful object, a perfect merger of form and function. I don’t have any fresh wasabi root at the moment, so I’ll probably try grating fresh ginger.
Favorite travel destinations?
Paris, Bali, Santa Fe, Vera Cruz, Fez. In the offing: South India, Bhutan, Sweden.
Where do you buy your spices?
My favorite shop is in the Marais in Paris. The owner is a 6th generation saffron merchant and he has a big apothecary jar of the most ravishing red-gold saffron on his counter. The smell is out of this world, The shop actually has a “sniffing bar” where you can almost get high on spices like nutmeg and mace. Often the spices at specialty shops in France are more vivid than in America. If you read Didier Corlou’s cookbook, A la Verticale des Epices, you begin to suspect that the French enjoy a deeply sensuous appreciation for spices that doesn’t exist here in the States.
I also love Christina’s in Cambridge, Mass. which always has something new and offbeat to try. That’s where I discovered smoked black Mexican salt—it’s very intense, but used sparingly, it adds a mysterious undertone to meaty stews. Kalustyans in New York has a huge selection of spices from many countries. I love their rose-scented spice mix for chai.
And for ordering spices on line, you can’t beat Penzeys. Their whole spices are very fresh and the selection is amazing: seven kinds of peppercorns from India, Indonesia and Malaysia; vanilla from Madagascar, Mexico and Tahiti. You can also get true cinnamon from Sri Lanka and compare it with cassia (which is sold as cinnamon in the U.S.) from Vietnam, China and Indonesia. Each one is distinctly different.
What do you wear when you’re cooking?
Bare feet. Gap Favorite T and Joe’s Jeans. All my T-shirts have turmeric stains, but I’ll never wear an apron.
What are you cooking tonight?
Chicken enchiladas with tomatillo sauce. It’s real comfort food, rich and cheesy, but punched up with Serrano chilies and tart tomatillos. The interplay of flavors is just amazing.