How a spoonful of turmeric helps the bitterness go away
We think of haldi as simply golden good cheer. But in fact, this spice is life itself.
Turmeric’s worth is in its ability to express bitterness.
Bitterness receives little airplay on culinary or cultural platforms.
Bitter foods. Bitter emotions. Bitter experiences. The flavour is not easily digestible, nor the emotional reality of bitterness particularly sexy.
But what is beautiful about bitterness is its honesty — an acrid non-pleasure on the palate and in the person that tells its own story.
When I was very young, my mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, an incurable and degenerative neurological condition, hallmarked by involuntary shaking of limbs, bodily stiffness and — in the end — mental confusion and physical incapacitation.
I’ve always found that circumstance hard to swallow.
Bitterness was not championed for me, in girlhood. Like all Indian households, turmeric was used in almost every meal. And yet, never was its taste brought forward. Turmeric was background noise to our palate of spice that had its song sung by higher, sweeter notes — cinnamon, ginger, and the feminine subtlety of cumin seed. Typical Kashmiri cuisine.
I’ve been taught by turmeric since then.
Bitter spice forms the foundation of aromatic blends.
In the mouth, friction means flavour. Spices work in contrast to each other — salt carves a deeper groove on our tongue when challenged by sweet; chilli’s high zing draws forward the lower, shadowed notes of ground cumin or black cardamom; the sweet acidity of amchoor breaks into the dense warmth of mace.
But if all of this crazy contrast is to make sense, the pan needs a strong and steady spine for spice to weave up and around. This pillar ensures the flavour created by friction equates with pleasure — not confusion.
In my pans, this centrality is turmeric.
I got to know turmeric by tasting her raw.
She has her own particular brand of warm strength — a foretaste of ginger that softens the blunt force of bitter that weights the tip of my tongue like lead; her clay consistency, a thin coat that prevents flavour from dropping through the floor of my palate.
Try for yourself. Take some turmeric on your tongue and feel where it hits you.
I use turmeric to cut through sugar cravings. I use its structure to create a bridge between the fetid wild sweetness of methi and the bullish cloy of cassia. I use it to feel the anchor of heavy emotion on days when the cold winds of November have me feeling so paper dry, I might just uproot and fly away.
As a woman, I’ve learned what — as a girl — I couldn’t understand; bitter emotion is the weight that pulls me into myself when life doesn’t go as planned. When a job is lost. When a failed love cuts deep. When sickness disturbs the life of one whom we hold close.
The necessity of being embodied during these times is an acceptance I’ve only come to into my forties. Being present for myself during hard times isn’t easy. But I do know from experience that acceptance and acknowledgement will set me on a faster path to recovery than joyful denial.
Turmeric offers me this expression in my pans. In times of trial, I use it liberally, scaffolding the flavour of ground dried turmeric with fresh turmeric grated straight from the skinned rhizome. The dried ground turmeric powder provides bitter background longevity as the spices are cooked slowly over time. The fresh shavings of the rhizome pull that receding bitter note to the palate’s forefront, so that the spice becomes both structure and flavour.
I use turmeric like this to taste where I am on days when I feel lost.
Turmeric tells me that my spine is strong.
That the lessons learned through hardship provide the steel that my character wraps around. I can be amchoor’s sweetly acidic high note and dried coriander’s floral lightness, because I have withstood difficulty and complexity, and remained upright.
In November, when the air is dry and the uncertainty of changing seasons uproots, take turmeric in warmed milk to provide your gut with a grounding that your flighty spirit can bed into.
Cook sweet potato in fresh and ground turmeric, a hearty spoon of ghee, salt, chilli, cumin seed, fresh ginger and tamarind to soothe the confusion and anxiety that a seasonal change brings.
Taste the beauty in the bitter. The warmth in the weight. This is the release of turmeric.