Thick-barked Indonesian cassia curls into scrolls or quill when it is stripped from the tree. Hotter and more pungent than true cinnamon from Ceylon, this is the spice most Americans know as cinnamon.
Yes, fall is in the air.
In my corner of the world that means shivery mornings, sun-struck afternoons planting saffron bulbs, and an evening craving for savory Moroccan tagines, tangy with preserved lemon, pungent with cinnamon.
In “Sweet, Hot,” (Saveur, October, 2009, pp. 82-91) Sara Dickerman takes a quick look at America’s favorite spice: its ancient history, the distinctions between true cinnamon from Ceylon and its more pungent cousin, cassia, and the best ways to cook with both.
“Cassia works well when you’re looking to give a dish a bit of backbone or to offset sweetness with a good, spicy kick: in chutneys, Southeast Asian curries and snickerdoodle cookies…” Dickerman writes. “True cinnamon lends itself to slow stewing and steeping, as well as to sweet applications; its round, clean flavor never comes on too strong.”
The article includes mainstream recipes for coffee cake and rice pudding, but as always I fell for more global fare such as Picadillo (Cuban Pork Hash) and Opor Ayam (Indonesian Chicken Curry), a recipe adapted from Saveur editor James Oseland’s superb cookbook, Cradle of Flavor.
Oh, and that cinnamon-scented Chicken Tagine with Green Olives, Carrots and Preserved Lemon? You can find a recipe right here on SpiceLines, along with an entire newsletter and many other posts devoted to cinnamon. To see them all, just enter “cinnamon” in the search box to the right.
A Recipe for Thieves Oil
In “The Claim: Cinnamon Oil Kills Bacteria,” (The New York Times, Science, September 8, 2009), Anahad O’Connor cites recent findings that cinnamon oil can kill germs such as E. coli, as well as those causing “hospital acquired infections, like streptococcus and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.”
A formula for “thieves oil,” which includes cinnamon, was also cited in the article. According to Dr. Lawrence Rosen, a New Jersey pediatrician, “The recipe goes back to the Middle Ages, where it was used by thieves who would go around stealing jewelry from dead bodies, and they never got sick.”
The basic ingredients include cinnamon bark, lemon oil and eucalyptus. Go here to see two recipes for this fragrant medieval “hand sanitizer.”
