SpiceLines

No more boring breakfasts: A hardboiled egg dipped into sea salt and freshly ground cumin and black peppercorns electrifies the palate, in a good way.

Resolved for 2010: More interesting breakfasts.

Intriguing, flavorful, unexpected—and not complicated. The kind of breakfast you can fix while still half asleep, but that will electrify your palate—in a good way.

This morning’s menu: Hardboiled eggs dipped in Moroccan cumin, flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

First tasted: At Kasbah du Toubkal—a restored fortress near Imlil in Morocco’s Middle Atlas Mountains—at 7:06 AM November 15, 2009.

After the predawn call to prayer and a solitary walk along the parapets of this strangely Himalayan mountain retreat—it stood in for the Tibetan monastery of Dunkar in Kundun, Martin Scorcese’s 1997 film about the Dalai Lama—I was hungry.

At first I thought the boy was just standing on the hill, gazing into the distance like so many others I’d seen.

For instance: the grey-bearded man in a green djellaba, striding smoothly across a dry, stubbly field, eyes fixed on the horizon.

Or the Berber woman in white scarf and red velvet dress, back turned to the road, waiting quietly for someone—or something—unseen

But then I saw the boy move slightly toward me, hand casually on hip, eyes averted. I raised my camera, unsure.

“He’s letting you take his picture, “ said Peggy.

Snap.

Instead of disappearing over the hill, he began to scramble down the sharp embankment, feet sliding in the dust.

Suddenly he was in front of me, staring intently, almost fearfully, into the lens. Was his heart pounding like mine?

Snap.

I pulled up the photo and turned the camera so he could see. He glanced, then backed away. Did the image alarm him?

Or was that not the point?

For him, perhaps it was an act of courage. For me, a forever memory.

I turned my eyes to the road. In the distance the unseen sea beckoned.

It’s that time again.

The bookshelves in the spice room—a.k.a. my office—are a shambles. I can’t stand it a minute longer.

After ransacking the room for Paula Wolfert’s Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, I found it sandwiched between Okakura’s Book of Tea and Nathaniel’s Nutmeg—all three under a chair, which naturally I haven’t sat in for six months because of all the books piled on the seat.

Elizabeth David’s Spices, Salts and Aromatics in the English Kitchen had fallen into the gigantic Thai granite mortar that sits on the floor. My books on saffron are perched precariously on a set of much loved but never used antique Japanese rice bowls, still encrusted with dirt from the farmland where they were excavated.

And don’t ask me where I’ve been keeping the memory cards from India and Morocco—or why the spice room smells of cardamom. Could it be that a certain plastic bag burst and scattered fragrant seeds behind the bookshelves?

Time to neaten up—and purge. That’s where you come in: For the second year in a row I’m forcing myself to part with some of the great foodie books I’ve acquired this year and before. There’s a passel of cookbooks, a novel, a few issues of Alimentum and a pristine copy of Gourmet’s swansong, just in case you missed it.

All you have to do is send an email to spicelinesatyahoodotcom Tell me which book you’d like—and give me a second choice since they tend to fly the coop pretty fast. Be sure to include your name and mailing address. If you get your request in first, I’ll let you know right away and send you the book you want for free. That’s right! For free! (Only if you live in the lower 48, I’m afraid—shipping costs are off the charts.)

Ready? Click below to see the titles:

Note: All the books in this post and the previous one have been taken.

My goodness! The books just flew out the window. Most were gone in the first 11 hours.

Indian cookbooks led the most wanted list. Most requested: Suvir Saran’s American Masala, followed by Hari Nayak’s Simple Indian Cooking. Nancy scooped up American Masala, Deborah just made it under the wire for the latter. Apologies to those of you who wrote in a few minutes later.

A big surprise: Only two of you asked for Jamie at Home. Last year everyone was clamoring for the Naked Chef. Not so this time around. So do you think Jamie is overexposed? Underexposed? Or have we just moved on? I’ll be watching his campaign against fast food in West Virginia.

I was delighted to hear that many of you, like me, live in small towns, far from the culinary capitals of the world. Yet like me, you have a consuming passion for curries and tagines, and travel to India, Morocco, Mexico and other spicy places. I’m thrilled that you share my interests!

Here’s a very short list of the remaining books:

The Sweet Spot, Pichet Ong. Ong, a 2005 Pastry Art and Design Magazine “10 Best” chef, rolls out 100 recipes for inventive Asian-inspired sweets. Among them: Kabocha Squash Cheesecake with Walnut Crust, the most requested dessert at Jean Georges Vongerichten’s Spice Market (where Ong was pastry chef) after it was featured in a Melissa Clark article for The New York Times. Other popular recipes include Ong's Jasmine Rice Pudding and Chocolate and Vietnamese Coffee Tart.

Alimentum, Issues 2, 4 and 5. “The only literary review all about food.” Short takes—poems, stories, memories, thought pieces—mean you can read just as much or as little as you want in one sitting. I loved an interview with novelist Diana Abu- Jaber about the role food plays in her books Crescent and The Language of Baklava. Also Barbara Singleton’s "Skimming Off the Top," a tale of eating yogurt in Kashgar, Lhasa and Goa. Entertaining bedtime reading.

And in case you were in an alternate universe last November—or maybe just riding camels on the beach in Morocco—I have a pristine copy of Gourmet’s last issue, still in its plastic mailer, virtually untouched by human hands. Gorgeous photos, interesting riffs on familiar Thanksgiving recipes, a last glimpse of the late great magazine.

In the kitchen of my dreams, chef Bahija shows us how to simmer eggplant separately from other vegetables in the coucousiere. Eventually all the spice infused vegetables will be arranged over the golden couscous, along with chickpeas, almonds and sweet onions.

It’s the plague from hell.

At least that’s what I’m calling the flu that ripped through our house last week. It felled everyone but the dog—and with her red rimmed eyes and occasional wheeze, I’m betting she has it too.

Somewhere between coughing fits and the 17th rerun of House, I floated off to Morocco and sunny kitchen at Jnane Tamsna.

High ceilings, pale green walls, heavy marble counters and tall windows opening onto a garden of palms, olive trees and cascading white bouganvillea. And a flood of sunlight, lending a luminous glow to the proceedings.

On the stove, an earthenware tagine with ginger- and cumin-scented kefta, or meatballs, bubbling in a tomato sauce redolent of garlic and fresh coriander….golden semolina couscous steaming in a curvaceous pot, a savory vegetable stew simmering below…fruity olive oil, Tamsna’s own, decanted into old green wine bottles.

It’s the kitchen of my dreams. A purely escapist fantasy, to be visited on dreary winter days…

Cleaning out the spice pantry, I discovered a forgotten cache of nutmegs. I cracked one open and inhaled its sweet, warm scent. Suddenly I found myself back in Kerala on a spice farm watching a man clamber up a nutmeg tree...

Snow is on its way…promises of thick flurries overnight with icy rain thrown in for good measure.

That makes it an excellent weekend to stay inside and purge the spice pantry, amongst other projects.

Nigel Slater cleaned out his own spice cupboard last Sunday, unearthing “a jar of whole cloves, whose scent reminds me of garden pinks; a thick glass pot of bone-dry cumin seed….vanilla beans as black as your hat….” and much more. At guardian.co.uk, he wrote that “each cap unscrewed, every jar sniffed is a story all of its own.”

My own spice pantry is also full of stories. It’s a museum of time travel, a “sniffing bar” offering instant sensory recall: Opening a jar of nutmeg, breathing in its warm, sweet scent, wafts me to Kerala, to a spice garden where a barefooted man is scrambling up a tree to cut down ripe nutmegs with a wickedly sharp blade. A shower of greenish gold fruit the size of small nectarines tumbles to the ground. He cuts through the flesh to reveal a shiny, purplish brown nut enmeshed in scarlet filigree. The nut is nutmeg, of course, and the filigree is fresh mace, which will eventually fade to a dark golden orange. Ironically the fragrance of both spices emerges only when they have been dried.

Slater tackled his “great scented treasure chest of ingredients” by making chicken curry—with cardamom pods, black peppercorns, cumin, coriander and ground chilli among other spices—and a fig and walnut cake flavored with vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg. (For the recipes, click the link above.)

As for me, I’ll be making a dent in my own mountain of spices with James Oseland’s spekkuk, a buttery Indonesian pound cake scented with nutmeg, cinnamon and clove—a sweet reminder of the tropics on a cold and snowy day.

Sensible tea drinkers will drink their brew inside, but me? What better way to warm body and soul on a snowy day than with a glass of hot, sweet Moroccan mint tea?

Do you love freshly fallen snow as much as I do?

Just imagine: Pristine drifts, pooled around gnarled oak trunks, a dusting of crystals on bright pink camellia blossoms, a white blanket billowing over rough ground, smoothing imperfections. When the wind blows, snow showers cloud the air.

Of course it’s easy to feel good when you only get two or three days of real snow a year. Instead of a labor, it’s cause for quiet celebration. You can hunker down inside, warming yourself by the fire…

Or you can have a Moroccan tea party in the snow.

Naturally that means mint tea sweetened with sugar and served steaming hot in bright blue glasses embellished with golden arabesques. One tiny sip and I’m in a cave dwelling near Fez, reclining on brocade cushions while a Berber woman simmers the intensely aromatic tea in an old brass kettle on a gas burner.