What We Call Masala by Sarina Kamini

What We Call Masala: A cook’s practical guide to the poetry of Indian spices, by Kashmiri-Australian cook Sarina Kamini, is a fantastic in-depth resource for cooks interested in learning more about Indian spices and how to use them in their kitchens. She covers an astounding variety of 74 spices and includes 85 recipes.

‘Learning the art of Masala is a bit like going to French cooking school or taking an Italian pasta class -knowing about masala will not only make your Indian curries taste better, but will open your eyes to new ways of seasoning and spicing the dishes you love for any cuisine.’

And woven throughout her book are her memories of growing up in a Kashmiri Hindu family, and how it was the food that was served on her family table and the stories around it that shaped her identity.

In What We Call Masala, the 74 spices have been divided into 11 categories. In her classes, she has found this is the best way to help people create their own relationship with masala. They are salts, fats and other masala carriers, bitter spices, hot spices, sweet spices, earth spices, warm spices, acidic spices, astringent-sulphurous spices, forest-floor spices, and structural spices. She writes:

Some of these categories take their name directly from the elements they resemble -earth spices, for example, are the seeds and powders possessed of grounding qualities and soil-like tastes and textures. Forest-floor spices recall the way winds shift leaves across the forest floor-an analogy for the way the dried and fresh leaf spices in this category move the weight of masala across the palate in gusts.

As I read her book from cover to cover, I was entranced by the lyrical way she writes about spices and was deeply impressed by her deep knowledge of masala. It was a lot to take in. I am following her suggestion to choose my own adventure, dipping in and out and experimenting with different recipes, thoughts, and approaches.

It will take time to source some of the ingredients, including mustard oil, kalo namak (Indian black salt), atta flour, ajwain seeds, and hing (asafoetida) powder, which are not available in my supermarket. Fortunately, you can order them from an Indian grocer online, and when they arrive, I will be able to create some of the traditional recipes from her Hindu-Kashmiri family kitchen and learn from her accompanying tasting notes, what different spices bring to masala, their emotive content and their relationship to traditional (Ayurvedic)medicine.

In the meantime, I will try some of the new dishes from around the world, which she has also included, and savour how these have been enhanced by adding Indian spices, such as her Mother’s chicken cacciatore. She learnt this from a recipe in the Australian Women’s Weekly cookbook, and it was a family favourite. Sarina has reimagined it by adding green cardamom and kashmiri chilli powder. And I am looking forward to nibbling on Nadia’s fennel shortbread, a recipe she was given by a top-notch local baker, and finding out how this bitter spice enhances its flavour. Her white pepper pavlova also sounds very intriguing. Sarina has made it just about every Christmas for more than 20 years.

In Australia, Sarina Kamini is known as The Mistress of Spice, and she has passed on her masala knowledge and skills at many classes in her local area. How lucky they are to have been taught by such a brilliant teacher!

And now, through this book, she is spreading her knowledge of masala far and wide. What We Call Masala is a book keen cooks will treasure and will go back to again and again to keep learning about masala.

Reviewer: Lyn Potter

Murdoch Books