Difference between cardamoms
Randy Burnside, of Jupiter, one of my longtime readers, sent this email asking for some clarification on the ingredients of an Indian recipe in a recent column.
“Thanks for your recipe for roughan josh. It calls for green cardamoms and black cardamoms. The cardamoms I have purchased have white pods and small black seeds. Please explain the difference and tell me where I can purchase the black and green cardamoms.”
The common cardamoms, available in most supermarkets, are the small ones, greenish to tan in color and are sometimes also referred to as white cardamoms. The white appearance results from mild bleaching. They all have small black seeds, as you found out. What stymied you was the reference to black cardamoms, which are also called brown or large.
Although both the green and black are from the same ginger-related family, they are of different genera – the small green ones from Elettaria while the larger blackish ones from Amomum. They are both native to India, but have now spread to many countries. In India, they are known as elaichi – the smaller one called “choti,” meaning small, the larger ones called “barhee,” meaning big.
Although green cardamom is far more expensive – being one of the most expensive spices in the world – it is used much more commonly in India and Scandinavian countries. It is highly and uniquely aromatic and just a touch goes a long way. In some less discriminating commercial use, however, the seeds of the much cheaper black ones are often substituted, in cakes and cookies, for instance.
The green cardamom is an essential ingredient in curry powders as well as in the cooking of curry dishes done from scratch. We never buy the readyground cardamoms; the fragrance dissipates rapidly and the chances of fraudulent substitutions are great. One way traders pad profit is by grinding the outer pod with the seeds.
Buy the pods whole, in small quantity, and keep them in a small, tightly sealed jar or bottle. In many curry dishes and others like pilaf, my wife, Kaisari just cracks the pods and includes three to four during cooking. If you need powdered, grind just the amount needed, best done in a mini mortar. Since we use it often, Kaisari often grinds a handful in a coffee/spice grinder and keeps the powder in a mini jar with a tight topper.
The big brother, black cardamom, however, has its own flavor and fragrance, and in many Indian recipes – such as in the Kashmiri roughan josh Randy first encountered in a New Zealand restaurant – both kinds are used to enhance the flavor complexity. Randy’s query evoked some old memories of large cardamoms.
I don’t know what botanists would pontificate, but my early memories of it, as a child in the Bengal province of northeastern India, was that of a fruit. I remember we called it “meethi elaichi,” meaning “sweet cardamom” in our Urdu mother tongue. The plump reddish pods, just ripe and full of fragrant juice and pulp, were a unique treat I still can savor in my mind’s eye.
These sweet cardamoms used to come to the Calcutta market from the Darjeeling region of the Himalayan range of northern Bengal. Of course, Bengal’s summer capital – when Bengal’s British governor fled from Calcutta’s heat – is far better known worldwide for the Darjeeling tea, the champagne of teas, as the Indian tea board calls it.
The ugly, dry and shriveled pods that you call black cardamom are a far cry from the red-tinged plump and juicy beauties that I remember as a “meethi” fruit. The pods go through long and laborious drying, often through smoking, to make them marketable. The final color is actually dark chocolate rather than black.
Randy, note that black cardamoms are widely available online, at local Indian groceries and at Whole Foods, at least on its online site. At Halal Meat Market, on Forest Hill at Military Trail (561433-3183), a 100-gram packet is $6.99.