Cardamom

Enlarge Image Image Gallery The varied forms of cardamom and “false” cardamom include, from bottom to top, ground and whole green pods, husked seeds, pods of a Chinese medicinal cardamom, white pods, grains of paradise, pods and seeds of Ethiopian cardamom, and black pods.

LIKE TINY CHRISTMAS BOXES, cardamom’s apple green husks hint at a treasure inside—the fragrant seeds that Indians call “the queen of spices”. The name suits both cardamom’s regal price and its alluring aroma. Few spices cost so much. Few have such a complex bouquet, one that is simultaneously floral and camphorous, smooth yet pungent, sweet and warm yet clean and refreshing.

Unfortunately, cardamom’s high price has relegated it to a minor role in the world’s cuisines. Most of this spice is used in a limited array of traditional, celebrative foods—Swedish Yule glogg, holiday breads and sweets, Arabic ­coffee served in thimble-sized cups as a ­gesture of hospitality, Indian masala tea and banquet pilafs. Don’t let cardamom’s cost and limited range of classic dishes dissuade you from trying this fragrant spice. A little of it goes a long way, and its flavoring potential is enormous.

The name suits both cardamom’s regal price and its alluring aroma.

True cardamom

Although most of us think of cardamom as a single spice, the word is applied to two groups of fragrant members of the ginger family. One, called true cardamom, Elettaria cardamomum and its cultivars, produces the expensive green or white pods you’ll find at your grocery or gourmet store. The other is a heterogeneous group of plants belonging primarily to the genera Amomum, Alpinia, and Aframomum. The seeds of these “false” cardamoms are used as cheap regional seasonings, folk medicines, and adulterants or extenders of the “true” spice. See page 34 for more about these plants.

True cardamom is a majestic plant with long, lance-shaped leaves. Depending on variety and cultivation, the plants grow 6 to 15 feet tall. Like its spicy relatives (ginger, turmeric, and galanga), it is a tender perennial native to the Asian tropics and requires similar tropical conditions: fertile, well-drained soil, heat, and abundant water (ideally, an annual rainfall exceeding 100 inches). The plants also require shade and wind protection, so most commercial cardamom is grown in semicleared jungle plots or on plantations intercropped with coffee trees, tea shrubs, betel palms, or black pepper vines.

In the wild, the plants spread by rhizomes or self-sown seeds. Commercial propagation is from freshly harvested seeds or by rhizome division. The plants’ first delicate white and purple-veined flowers appear about five years after planting or sowing. Bees pollinate the flowers, and the resulting fruit, or pod, matures over the next several months. The plants continue to bloom every spring or summer for the next ten to fifteen years, but then they degenerate and must be replaced with fresh plants.