A Whisper of Cardamom: Sweetly spiced recipes to fall in love with

(Hardback)

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This is a love story between sugar and spice.

Spice is often the party girl, the loud, bold, exuberant element in the mix. There is also another art, more subtle yet equally seductive. Married with sugar, spice can provide a delicate fragrance, hard to put your finger on but one that gives backbone to a dish. It can balance tartness and bring sweetness so you can tone down the sugar. Flavours can be enhanced by a thoughtful addition from the spice cupboard, making chocolate more chocolatey and fruit taste more of itself. Added not in shouts, but in whispers, an intrigue of spice deepens allure. In this book, we explore how to unlock flavours, and how to marry them to make much more than the sum of their parts.

Floral and fruity spices pair well with rich fats. Warming spices like ginger and clove play off treacly brown sugar. Anise sweetens, lemony coriander seed brightens and herbaceous notes pick out complexity in chocolate. A suspicion of nutmeg cuts the sweet creaminess of custard for a more rounded tart, and a whisper of cardamom makes inky poached plums jaunty and interesting.

Chapters are divided by taste to guide you towards a dessert or bake that is bright and zippy, floral and fragrant, or dark and spicy. Recipes include spice switches so you can be creative and playful with your combinations. For those with an eye to expanding their repertoire, there are helpful spice-matching features and flavour wheels to inspire. A whole world of inviting new flavours awaits.

Author Bio

Eleanor Ford is a food writer and a cook who loves to travel. She collects and creates eclectic, evocative recipes from around the world. In her writing, food is a means to explore culture and understand the world. A 'culinary detective', as Yotam Ottolenghi describes her. She also lectures regularly for The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. on the topic of spice and has given talks about food all across the globe.

Her first book, Samarkand, written alongside friend and travel journalist Caroline Eden, was named a book of the year by the Guardian and Food52's Piglet. It also won the Guild of Food Writers Award for Food and Travel in 2017. Her second book, Fire Islands, won two Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in 2020 and was the winner of the Food and Drink Book of the Year at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. It also won Der Deutsche Kochbuchpreis Bronze and was named winner of the International and Regional Cuisine category in the 2020 Guild of Food Writers Food and Drink Awards. Her third book, The Nutmeg Trail, was published in 2022 by Murdoch Books and is a finalist in the Guild of Food Writers Food and Drink Awards 2023.
Eleanor holds a first-class MA from Edinburgh University. She founded and runs two successful international education businesses alongside her career in food writing. When not travelling and collecting recipes, she lives in London with her young family.

'Eleanor Ford's passion shines through her beautiful and picturesque writing.' Guild of Food Writers Awards 2020