Tasting notes

The new spice age

‘THE BARK IS MADE up of delicate, tissue-paper furls. It’s completely different…’ Rachel Walker is describing cinnamon. ‘True’ cinnamon, from Sri Lanka, the quills of which look ‘almost like a cross section of mille feuille’. More often than not, she says, the cinnamon we buy in supermarkets is cassia, a single thick roll of bark; the real stuff is fragrant and great for adding layers of flavour to slow-cooked tagines. ‘I’d use it as perfume if I could’, she tells me.

Walker is the co-founder of Rooted Spices, a range sourced from single

origins and marketed much like chocolate is to its connoisseurs. ‘The way we consume coffee, chocolate, tea and wine has changed so much over the past decade,’ she says. ‘From having a Nescafé, we now want coffee beans roasted on site.’

By contrast, our spice collections are often woefully unattended, the pots bleached with age and contents lacking potency. My own recent stocktake revealed five ground cinnamons, three paprikas and a brace of turmerics; Walker’s market research unearthed 17 cumins in one kitchen. ‘We’d love people

to get rid of the rubbish,’ she says, since the difference between good and bad spice can make all the difference to dinner. ‘Poor cumin has a bitter edge, but a good one you can dip bread into with oil. Za’atar can be very dry and twiggy, but we’ve found a fluffy, green, fresh thyme-based version.’ Rooted’s turmeric and cumin come from India, its cardamom from Guatemala; huge fennel seeds, from Turkey. ‘Not all spices are created equal,’ Walker says. By seeking out the best, there’s hope for our cooking yet. rootedspices.com

Spice world After tasting a vast number of Za’atars, Rooted selected their fluffy, fresh-thyme blend