SpiceLines

When fresh, mace's scarlet web encircles the dark brown nutmeg "seed." Who knew that dried, intact nutmeg and mace is one of the "new staples?"

A huge stack of The New York Times piled up while I was away last week, meditating and collecting yoga tattoos. Here’s what I’m reading now:

156 Things to Do with Bay Leaves

That’s how many people answered Mark Bittman’s plea for ways to use up a half-pound bag of bay leaves bought 5 years ago. “They still smell pretty good, they’re high quality Turkish if I remember correctly, and there are just so many of them,” he blogged in “What Do You Do With Bay Leaves?” on The New York Times Diner’s Journal, June 29, 2010.

A few of my faves: Alex says that in Turkey, “they soak bay leaves in water, then skewer them on kebabs, directly next to the chicken/lamb/etc. that way the culinary impact is definitely not questionable. “

Iw243 stuffs “a nice big whole fish, like branzino or sea bass, with a handful of them and tuck[s] them under the fish. Sprinkled with salt, drizzle with oil and bake. The leaves infuse the fish’s flesh with all their wonderful flavor and you can get rid of at least 10-20 leaves that way.”

Ali makes berry jam with bay leaves. Jengoneagain fills dried figs with walnut halves and fennel seeds, then layers bay leaves and figs in a container and puts it in a cool place for five to 30 days. ESS adds a leaf or two to basmati rice along with a small piece of cinnamon and a few cardamom pods.

Fresh bay leaves add a delicate floral aroma to figs "stewed" in honey with vanilla bean and lemon zest. Their astringency also balances what could be an overly sweet dessert.

Were you surprised to hear that figs and bay leaves are an ideal couple?

A few weeks ago, I was talking to our French patissiere, Annie Pambaguian. By our I mean she lives just a few miles away, so we’re never more than 10 minutes from her luscious raspberry macarons. The topic of the day was spices and herbs. After we compared notes on curry and coconut, her voice dropped low:

“I have some friends who keep dried Turkish figs, stuffed with chocolate, in a box with bay leaves,” she murmured. “The aroma is absolutely—“ She shook her head dreamily. Mentally I filled in the word “intoxicating.”

Figs and bay leaves have been rattling around in my head while the second crop of Marseilles figs has taken a pause.

The girl was exhausted, irritable, unhappy. Not sleeping, snapping at everyone, feeling harassed, even tearful. Late night Prosecco-drinking, too much eating of candied ginger, scarcely glancing at the lush tropical garden out the kitchen window.

Are you curious to know what happened? Would you like to riffle a few pages of her private journal? Go ahead...

One of the pleasures of shopping at Heywood Hill is snagging hard-to-get British cookbooks well ahead of the curve. The latest? Niki Segnit's wonderfully idiosyncratic Flavor Thesaurus.

This post is about flavor. But first, a question.

Do you have a favorite bookshop? (Superstores need not apply.)

One of mine is G. Heywood Hill. Unfortunately it happens to be located on Curzon Street in London, a pesky detail which prevents me from dropping by on a whim, just to see what’s new (or old) in the world of cookery, travel, fiction—and everything else.

On the way to Lisbon, I bought so many books that I had to have them shipped home. I scooped up Chef: A Novel by Jaspreet Singh, about an Indian cook’s last journey to Kashmir, Darina Allen’s marvelous doorstopper, Forgotten Skills of Cooking (700 recipes and counting) and a reprint of John Evelyn’s 1699 Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets.

There was a line from P.G Wodehouse on the shop’s front door: “This,’ he said, ‘is like being in heaven without going to all the bother and expense of dieing.”

Exactly.

Chill, baby, chill: Watermelon-tomato gazpacho should be served icy cold, preferably as an aperitif with a few tiny avocado, bacon and shrimp open-faced sandwiches.

How often has this happened to you?

A dish that seems brilliant the first time around, falls to earth with a thud the next time you order it.

Last April I wandered into the lobby of a swank Boston hotel. On a rainy day the chilly dining room had all the allure of a designer igloo. I sat down anyway and surreptitiously kicked off my wet shoes. I was hungry.

Who knows why I ordered the watermelon-tomato gazpacho that day? Maybe I was dreaming of summer.

But I can’t tell you how beautiful it was. In the center of a gleaming white bowl with a broad rim, shimmered a small pool of bright cerise soup with the texture of silk velvet. A stack of avocado chunks crowned by a curl of pristine pink lobster tail rose up like a pale green island in the middle of this rosy lake.

Oh, where was my camera? It was almost too beautiful to eat—but I managed. The first spoonful dazzled my taste buds. The gazpacho was sweet and tart, almost sparkling with fresh green taste of cilantro (but nary a trace of the leaf), a splash of lime, and, lurking in the shadows, a touch of peppery heat.

But it was the watermelon that was the revelation. Refreshing, sugary and cold, it conjured up long ago summer nights, sitting outside in the dark in our pajamas, eating slices of icy melon, letting the sweet sticky juice drip onto our bare feet.

Curries to the rescue? It's unlikely that you'll be able to dine on Kerala red snapper coconut curry at 35,000 feet anytime soon--even though its fragrant spices are far more appealing than the usual tasteless airline food.

Surely this has happened to you.

You’re on a transatlantic flight, wedged into a cramped seat, desperately seeking a place to put your feet, trying not to savage the chair in front of you when its 6-foot 3-inch occupant leans all the way back. Right about then, the so-called food trolley trundles down the aisle.

There it is: your meal for the next 5 hours. Mystery chicken or lasagna, brown around the edges and congealing on its plastic plate, limp lettuce with dressing of an unearthly pink hue, a stale roll and rubbery gouda, and “cake” with a gooey layer of extruded “frosting.” Everyone around you is gobbling as if this were the last supper.

Do you eat it? Certainly not. Instead, you reach into your carry-on and….

This "millenary" Hojiblanco tree, said to be 1,800 years old, is the jewel in the grove of other ancient olive trees belonging to Aceites Vizcantar in Priego de Cordoba in Andalusia.

I dreamed I was walking in a grove of ancient olive trees.

Like petrified giants, they stood rooted deep in the soil. Their gnarled trunks seemed made of stone, grey bark riddled with crevices. Only the silvery leaves sprouting from twisted branches fluttered in a sudden breeze.

If those trees could talk, what tales they would tell. Of Romans and Moors who swept across these hills centuries ago, leaving aqueducts and watch towers behind. And of a little boy who played happily among the rabbits and birds, plucking wild asparagus, hiding in a hollow of a tree older than he could count.

But wait. Is this a dream?

No, I’m awake—and I’ve seen that very grove.