♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Now, I was recently in Calabria, and I had a minestrone-- vegetable soup.

In that first spoonful, you know what I tasted?

I didn't taste basil or anything else-- I tasted celery.

And that completely blew my mind.

When was the last time you tasted something, a soup or stew or a sauté, and the first thing you tasted was celery?

So it got me thinking, like, you know, our entire way of cooking is based on the old French method of the essence of foods, right?

And don't muck around with it.

The problem is, so many of our foods just don't have that much essence left anymore.

So that got me thinking about Milk Street and starting it eight years ago.

And it was really about spices to a large extent, right?

Because the foods we have now in our supermarkets, more or less, need help.

And the easiest way to help out food is with spices.

So here are three of our favorite spice recipes.

A dukkah-crusted chicken cutlet.

Dukkha is a ground nut spice, which also has some sesame seeds in it, cumin, coriander, maybe fennel.

And then we're going to take a berbere from Ethiopia and use it with a spiced lentil stew.

And finally, my favorite spice mix of all is za'atar.

And we're going to use that with roasted carrots.

So if you think your cooking is a little bland and you want to sort of perk it up, stay tuned.

I'm going to show you a little bit about how to incorporate spices into your home cooking.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

♪ ♪ MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments-- some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.

♪ ♪ - Spices, and in particular, spice blends are probably the most important ingredient at Milk Street.

And there's one simple reason why; using spice blends is the easiest way to become an incredible cook.

All you have to do is pop the top of one of these blends, and you are most of the way to an aromatic and delicious dinner.

You're going to be using berbere and za'atar and dukkah in the recipes in this episode.

But I also want us to talk about building our own spice blends.

And there's two reasons why.

One, look how beautiful these are!

When you build your own spice blend, you get a minute to become an artist in the kitchen, which is just fun and beautiful and indulgent.

The practical culinary reason is that understanding spices is a fundamental lesson in understanding flavor.

And flavor is what cooking is all about.

So we're going to build a spice blend here together right now.

And then you can use this knowledge at home.

To build a spice blend, you want to think about your spices in categories.

So we have a grounding category: turmeric, cumin, coriander.

We have a sweet warming category: star anise, and cinnamon, nutmeg.

A refreshing and herbal category: cardamom, mint, fennel.

A sour category, which is the category my students know the least and is my favorite.

That's sumac or dried lime.

It might be dried mango, known as "amchoor."

And then the fiery category, another favorite of mine.

These are your chilies, but also black pepper.

And if you have really good quality dried ginger, it's spicy.

So the basic rules for making your own spice blend; you choose three spices from two of these categories.

Why?

Because parameters are your friend.

If you choose two from the same category, you're ensured that your blend will have a point of view, as I call it.

It will have some coherency, it will make sense.

And then the third one is for contrast, which is the cornerstone of great cooking at Milk Street.

So we're going to make crispy chickpeas, and I want to think about a spice blend for them.

I'm going to go with grounding and sour, because I told you how much I like sour.

So we're gonna go with turmeric and cumin, two spices from the same category.

And then black lime as our acidic, punchy counterpoint.

For these crispy chickpeas, I need a tablespoon of spice blend, which conveniently is three teaspoons.

And I'm gonna do a teaspoon of each spice.

What that actually translates to is two teaspoons of grounding, cause now we're thinking about our spices in categories, and one teaspoon of tart; my black lime.

We want to add a little salt.

Ground spices don't taste all that great.

The whole ones smell beautiful-- they all smell beautiful.

The whole ones look beautiful.

But ground spices don't taste that great.

If you want to taste your spice blend, make sure you add salt.

And I actually added, like, a quarter-teaspoon of sugar.

It brings out the flavors that you can't taste just with the ground spices.

And there I have my spice blend.

We have one can, which is one-and-a-half cups if you cook your own chickpeas from dry, that are well dried off.

We're gonna fry these in oil.

And so we don't want a lot of moisture in the pan.

And to aid with browning, we're gonna add in some cornstarch and sort of fluff it around in here.

You get rid of the extra cornstarch, make these little chickpea snowballs.

And then you want to heat a quarter-cup of olive oil, which is four tablespoons over medium.

For these chickpeas, though, you don't want it smoking and scalding hot.

Cause you need time for the browning to happen without burning the outsides.

We're going to add our spices after we fry our chickpeas.

And that's really key when you're cooking with spices, especially ground ones, is they burn easily.

We're going to bloom them, but in a gentler heat than straight in the oil in the pan.

♪ ♪ Let's see how these look-- you want to give them a stir, Oh, yeah, we're starting to get a nice, little crusty glow.

We're just going to stir them around.

And then same thing, don't touch.

Let them get crispy on the other side.

The first side takes four minutes.

You can make it go longer if you turn the heat down.

And the second side will be a little shorter cause the first side's already cooked.

Now's the magic-- we're gonna add our spice blend.

Whatever spice blend you built at home, it does not have to be this one-- I hope you're making many.

You can invite friends over for a crispy chickpea tasting.

So I've turned the heat off, though.

That's the most important thing; residual heat.

And I'm just gonna sprinkle in my spice blend.

And immediately, you are going to smell it.

It's incredible how fast those aromas come up to your nose.

Which is another cue about cooking with spices; they're volatile, like people.

They get hot and then they cool down really quickly.

So when you want to have the most impact with your spices, try and bloom them right before you serve something.

You might make a little bit of a spiced oil, drizzle it on top of a soup and then serve it immediately.

You'll get the most impact for your work.

You can put them straight onto a serving platter.

You can drizzle them straight onto a big platter of roasted vegetables.

You can put them in little cups and serve them with bubbles or whiskey, which is one of my favorite appetizers.

You can also put them on a paper towel-lined tray like I am here.

You get a little of the extra oil off, and then they're awesome sprinkled onto a salad.

They really boost up something, maybe, with a little bit of bitterness, like arugula or radicchio.

All right, let's see how we did.

I told you it was impossible to fail if you follow the rules of three spices from two categories.

Nailed it.

These are grounding from the cumin and the turmeric-- category one.

And then they get a nice little punch of acidic flavor from category two, which was our black lime from our tart category.

♪ ♪ - I want to show you how to make dukkah-crusted chicken cutlets with a little carrot salad on the side.

And spices, specifically, whole spices are the key to making this really delicious.

This is an Egyptian condiment.

This is a condiment that they use and put on everything from scrambled eggs in the morning to roast chicken at night.

We want to start with sesame seeds.

These are untoasted, you can buy them raw, and this is how they will come.

When you toast them, if you think about toasted sesame oil, that rich, nutty flavor, we want to coax that flavor out of these sesame seeds.

So they need a little bit of toasting.

So I've got a pan here on medium heat, and this will just take a couple minutes.

One of the things about dukkah, you can't buy this in a grocery store, because it's got nuts in it.

Nuts have a lot of fat in them, and they are prone to go rancid.

So you want to make this and use it right away.

I like to make double batches of this, and I'll throw a little in the refrigerator, and I'll sprinkle it on salads or on some scrambled eggs throughout the week.

It's really, really good.

So we got a little light, toasty color.

I can smell those sesame seeds.

I'm just going to pour them out here into a little bowl.

And now we'll build the dukkah.

Cashews-- I'm going to use about half of these.

I will save some back to put into our carrot slaw that goes on the side.

So we're marrying the flavors all the way throughout the dish.

So now for our spices.

I have the cumin seed.

Add about a tablespoon of that.

Right into the processor.

Same thing with the coriander seed.

Now coriander seed, it has that nice kind of mustardy, bright flavor.

And then our caraway.

This is really... (sniffs) really nice.

When I smell this, I think of my mother's rye bread.

She used to make rye bread all the time when we were kids.

She was known for it, and this is the smell that I remember.

It's so, so nice.

So about half the amount of the caraway.

And then we're gonna add half of those toasted sesame seeds.

Again, I'm gonna use the rest of them for our carrot slaw.

So we have a harmonious plate of flavors, and then also, a little bit of salt and pepper.

About a quarter-teaspoon each.

And then finally, the dried oregano.

Be careful here, be sure you use dried herb, whatever you want to choose here.

You could use basil, you could use dried chives, but make sure it's dried.

If you put fresh in there, there's too much moisture.

It will make the dukkah pasty.

So there we go.

This is really beautiful.

It's powdery, it'll mix well with our panko.

And I would just put that on a jar and throw it on my table and sprinkle it on everything throughout the day.

So now onto our carrot slaw.

We just have some white wine vinegar.

This will essentially sort of pickle those carrots.

The rest of our roasted cashews add a little crunch, and then the rest of our sesame seeds, about a half-teaspoon of salt in there.

And that can stand by.

This is a delicious salad with really anything.

Grilled meat would be great.

And you can make this ahead and keep it in your fridge.

It's like having a little jar of pickled vegetables in the refrigerator.

So I'm ready to put my coatings together for the chicken and get dinner on the table.

So I'll throw all of that dukkah right in there to the panko.

And panko breadcrumbs are great when you want to coat something and you want crunch, you want texture, so we'll mix that up.

I'm gonna add a little more salt and pepper here just to season those breadcrumbs.

Then we have a classic breading system here.

We have flour and cornstarch.

I'm gonna mix those together, put a little cornstarch in with the breading mix here, because that also will contribute to crunchiness.

And then finally, some eggs.

They need a little water in them.

That will help, sort of, thin it out so it will coat evenly.

Now, for our chicken, I've just got thin sliced chicken breast cutlets.

So now I want to season those with a little salt and pepper.

Season in layers while you cook, rather than dumping it all on the end.

If you do that to your cooking, then you're gonna get a mouthful of salt and a mouthful of pepper.

If you season in layers as you cook, you're gonna have even seasoning throughout, and it's not gonna jump out.

It's just going to complement all the other flavors.

First order of business, into the flour, one at a time.

I like to use a fork.

Tempted to go right in with my fingers, but then I'll have panko-crusted fingertips instead of chicken.

Into the egg.

Light coating there.

Let the excess drip off.

And then into our beautiful panko and dukkah.

Just use my fingers here now.

Scoop it all around, get a nice, even, even coating.

There we go.

Now I can use my fingers.

Nothing's gonna stick.

Beautifully well-coated.

Both sides.

Continue, get all of your chicken ready to go before you start cooking.

When you put something in the pan, put the side closest to you, next to the pan, and lay them away from you.

The reason you want to do that is if you happen to drop it from the tongs or the fork, whatever you're using and you're coming the other direction, it's going to splash that oil right out all over you and burn you.

Give the pan a little shake to make sure that they're not stuck to the bottom.

If your oil is hot and there's enough of it in there, it's not gonna stick.

And these are quick.

These are about two minutes per side.

They'll get crunchy, golden brown.

They'll be ready to eat.

So that was a snap, about ten minutes.

I've got dinner ready, and we're just gonna plate them.

Let's do a single plate here.

So that couldn't be simpler, but we have really elevated the flavors of a basic chicken cutlet meal.

All right, let's give this a little try here.

A little of that slaw on the side.

So good-- crispy, crunchy, that bright vinegar slaw, it's really delicious.

So when you think about spices, think beyond ground spices.

Get some whole spices and get them in your pantry.

You can crush them, even use a mortar and pestle or a little food processor.

Add some nuts to them and put them in any coating, any breading, even sprinkle them on top of salads.

It adds a big pop of flavor, and a nice little crunch, which you will not get with ground spices.

So I love working with whole spices, especially for a dish like this.

♪ ♪ - So here's the thing about spice mixes, right?

In Ethiopia, if you wanted to get a berbere spice mix, you wouldn't buy it in a jar.

You go to a shop that mixes spices to custom specifications.

It's really part of your everyday cooking.

So we start with smoked paprika.

Then we have cayenne pepper.

Ginger.

We have sweet paprika.

We have garlic powder.

Cardamom goes in.

Onion.

Coriander.

Dried basil.

And finally cumin.

That was a lot of spices.

(chuckles) So obviously we're not using all of this; for this recipe, we use a tablespoon.

The point of this, the two points, you want it fresh, right?

Something like dukkah, which uses ground nuts.

that goes bad in just a few weeks because, you know, nuts will get stale and sort of rancid.

So you want it fresh, and then it's something you can use almost every day.

You can put in your eggs, you put it in chicken, put it in soup and stew, it just becomes part of your repertoire.

So we're going to start making the spicy red lentils.

Start with butter or ghee.

Ghee really is butter fat without much of the water in it.

One chopped up yellow onion.

One other thing to think about with spices is if you have whole spices, it's better to start with whole spices.

You can toast them for two or three minutes in a dry pan, let them cool down, and then put them in a mortar and pestle.

I think that a mortar and pestle, like a stone one, for example, a bigger one, does a better job of mashing them and grinding them.

I think a spice grinder, you get too fine a powder.

So I like that coarseness.

Same with black pepper.

If you want to have pepper in a recipe, is to start with whole peppercorns.

Toast them for two or three minutes, let them cool, grind them.

I think actually toasting gives you two or three times more flavor than just what you get out of a ground spice in a jar.

Tomato paste, we use a lot, couple tablespoons.

And we're going to sauté this for just a couple of minutes.

I'm sick and tired of hearing the word "umami."

I know you are probably, too.

But in any case, it does give you that foundation for a recipe.

So anytime you want a little more depth when you're cooking onions, add some tomato paste and cook it for a couple minutes.

Now we're going to add ginger and garlic for just 30 seconds.

You can smell that.

Well, you can't smell that, but I can smell that.

And then we're going to add one tablespoon of berbere.

We have a cup of red lentils.

Go in.

And we have a quart of chicken stock, hopefully low sodium.

Keep it at a low simmer for about 20, 25 minutes until the lentils are fully cooked.

So we're gonna finish this stew while it's cooking.

We're gonna prepare a garnish, which we just happen to like.

Tomato, jalapeno, and ginger, a little salt and pepper, half a teaspoon of each.

So we'll cook this for another 20 minutes or so.

It's gonna cook down, get thicker, almost like a stew.

So we have two tablespoons of ghee left over, and that's going to go right in.

It's sort of like a tomato sauce.

I'd add a lot of olive oil at the end when it's finished.

There we go.

Mm.

I really like this topping on it.

So you can get injera, which is the Ethiopian flatbread, or you could use naan or whatever.

Or you could serve this with rice.

And this is good enough to be in the center of the plate.

This could be a main course supper.

And this is a great example of an inexpensive, common, humble ingredient, if you will, which is totally transformed by the use of spices and a little bit of technique.

And that shows you what you can do with very little to get something that's fabulous.

♪ ♪ - All right, everybody, so, so far in this episode, you've seen your own spice blend with chickpeas, you've seen dukkah with chicken breast, and you've seen berbere with red lentils.

What all three of those recipes proved is that any night of the week, all you need to do is pop the top of a spice blend, and you can make magic in your kitchen.

But what this recipe proves is that spices can also be maximalist.

We've got sweet carrots, not a bland chicken breast.

We've got roasted oranges, pomegranate molasses, pistachios.

And I haven't even gotten to our spice blend, which is za'atar, which we'll get to in a minute.

So we're actually treating our carrots a little bit like meat.

We're gonna roast them slow and low.

You want to cut off the greens.

I'm not one of those people who loves the carrot top pesto situation.

If you want to make pesto, God bless, don't invite me to dinner.

Then you want to make sure you peel them.

If I'm being precise, I want to cut off the little tips.

So the key thing, besides a low temperature, we're going to roast these for almost an hour in total, is you want surface area.

And so it's nice to cut these on a steep bias, which just means at an angle so that you get this nice area here and all of that can become browning.

This is a two-part roast.

We're going to add flavor in layers.

Spices, especially ground spices, which our spice blend is, burn quickly.

So we're going to start the first part of our roasting just in olive oil at 350 degrees for 30 minutes; that will soften them enough so then we can add our next layer of flavor and finish roasting them off.

Have a great meaty, dense texture, but the spices won't burn.

And if this is all you've ever done to carrots, your mind is about to explode.

So, into the 350-oven for 30 minutes, and then we'll move on to step two.

So, while our carrots roast for the first 30 minutes, we're gonna get the rest of the ingredients ready.

So we want to zest... this orange.

And then I just let it sit in the grater until I'm ready to use it.

Roasting citrus-- if you've never done this, I hope this is your gateway to heaven.

We roast oranges, lemons, grapefruit.

When you wanna tone down the acidity and sort of amplify the sweetness, you wanna roast your citrus.

And now let's talk about our spice blend.

The name za'atar both refers to a type of oregano and to this blend.

So the green part you see in here is that wild oregano, za'atar-- it's a particular type.

But it's also sesame seeds and sumac, always.

People then do variations.

Sometimes there's some lemon zest.

There might be a chili flake.

If you remember back to the beginning of this episode, when I told you about spice blending and the rules, and you pick three spices, but only from two categories, this explodes my rules.

And you know what?

Trust time, you know, over youth.

This has been around for generations.

Millions of people cook with this spice blend.

It is perfect for the amount of contrast it has in it.

So we'll be back in about 25 minutes, now that I've killed a few, and continue on with the recipe.

♪ ♪ So when you look at these carrots, a lot of people stop here.

They're soft, they're roasted all the way through, but they're not browned at all.

So while these are cooked through, they're not done.

So I have a quarter-cup of melted butter here.

You could sprinkle the zest and za'atar on separately, but I think you get a more even application if you mix it all into the butter.

Here's the zest that I had earlier.

Now you have this amazing, liquefied compound spice butter with orange zest, and we're gonna pour it on.

So, again, we didn't pour this on at the beginning, cause both butter and the spices would burn if they roasted for that long, or at least get a little too roasty.

By adding them halfway through, we make sure that the milk solids in the butter don't burn.

The spices don't burn.

Everything just gets caramelly and nutty.

A little savory, a little richer, more grown up, but not acrid, not charred.

And then the roasted citrus I waxed poetic about, you want to sort of just nestle this around, so it also can soften and caramelize.

And then we're gonna use that to deglaze the pan a little bit later.

Messy hands usually mean something delicious is going to happen.

So this is going back into the oven for another 15 to 20 minutes.

But remember, your oven will be different than mine.

Look for the cues of caramelization.

Look for the citrus to get a little cooked.

That's really how you know that this is done.

We'll stir it halfway through to make sure that we get that deep caramelization all the way around.

We want to squeeze one of our orange segments.

I'm gonna take the juiciest looking one.

Oh, these are gorgeous.

Look at all this browning that we're seeing.

Okay, but now it's all roasty, toasty.

It needs some perk, it also needs some crunch.

So we're gonna start first with pomegranate molasses, reduced pomegranate juice.

It sort of speaks to the sumac, that bright, berry tartness, and then pistachios.

All right, and I'm not going to wait to plate.

I'm going to take this very roasty carrot here.

I'm going to drag it through some extra butter, give it a taste.

This is maximalist.

These are so good.

This is your new holiday dish.

But this is also your Tuesday night, "I want to make myself feel good" vegetable dish.

This doesn't need anything else next to it.

I hope this episode has proven to you that a spice blend is all you need to be an extraordinary cook.

You can get the recipe for this and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street Television at MilkStreettTV.com.

- Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

- The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show.

From cacio e pepe and skillet spanakopita, to Brazilian-style carrot cake and Thai coconut soup, the Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments-- some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪