Cardamom Brownies – Spice Spoon in the New York Times

Cardamom Brownies NYT 3

Hello and a Happy New Year to all of you!

I was asked to be a Contributor for a piece on ‘How to Deal with Heartbreak’, in the New York Times – I hope you enjoy reading it. Here is the link (that is an edited version). Many of you asked me for the full text, because what was printed in the New York Times had to be edited down. Here is the full text:

How to Handle Heartbreak

It was a cold and wet day in the winter of 2002, when I first arrived in Rome. I remember sitting in my apartment on the Aventine hill on that first night, next to the window overlooking the Giardino degli Aranci, flipping through Vanity Fair in Italian, trying to eat slices of pizza ai funghi my landlady, Cristina, had bought for me from Passi, the local bakery down the hill. Feeling depressed and lonely, I didn’t have much of an appetite. I had made a decision to end a relationship and leave my family home in Washington, DC, for a new job at the United Nations in Rome – as a way of starting over again. I turned to my left and stared at the beautiful marble counter in the kitchen – Cristina was a chef, after all – and at the stone mortar and pestle sitting on that counter, brought back from Cristina’s travels to South America. I thought about all the special meals I had made for the man I had loved and shared so much of my life with – the braised Afghan-style lamb stew with burnt aubergine (his favourite), eaten alongside bowls of the Levantine-style of rice with broken vermicelli I had learnt to make from his mother. Heartbroken in Rome, I wondered how I could ever be happy again.

My second morning in Rome, Cristina invited me to host a dinner party with her, as a means of introducing me to her Roman friends. My last few weeks before leaving Washington, DC, my mother had been cooking for me, as I had lost all enthusiasm to go into the kitchen. The thought of cooking for strangers in a new city, who were not familiar with cuisine from my part of the world, excited me just a little bit, so I decided to make those very dishes which would remind me of the comfort of home and my mother – to help me forget the heartbreak, just a little. I decided to make koftay – spiced meatballs in a jammy tomato sauce; chana dahl – lentil soup; and tah-dig – saffron-crusted rice, as a nod to my paternal grandmother’s Persian heritage. And to round off the night, I would serve something with chocolate and fragrant notes of cardamom – the scent of home.

After a trip to Castroni, a specialty store, where I bought basmati rice and saffron and other whole spices like cumin, coriander and cardamom, Cristina and I began to cook together in my new kitchen. I crushed strands of saffron, staining my fingertips vermillion, while Cristina helped me sauté ginger and garlic in olive oil till it turned bronze. I mixed brownie batter, while Cristina transformed cardamom seeds into powder in her pestle and mortar before sprinkling it into the bowl. Our guests arrived later that night, holding hot bowls of chana dahl in their hands and ladling spicy tomato sauce over mounds of saffron-stained rice, washing it down with Pinot Nero. We ate squares of brownies with thimbles of espressi before the end of the night and just for those few hours, I laughed with others and realised that I was lucky to be living in such a fascinating city.

If it were not for that second day in Rome, when I had cooked with Cristina and hosted a dinner party, I may have still been sitting on my dining table, staring out the window onto the Giardino degli Aranci for weeks on end. It was that morning, whizzing through the streets of Rome with Cristina on her motorbike, and that ritual of cutting, mincing and stirring, which made me forget – for some moments of time – all the pain and heartache that had paralysed me in Washington, DC. Even though this was a meal which began with a spell of heartbreak, it reminded me of all the good things in life, which includes cooking for others and breaking bread together.

And as part of the piece, you will find the recipe for my cardamom brownies – they are quite moist and sticky – I hope you enjoy making, eating and sharing them.

Ingredients:
*8-10 green cardamom pods
*120 g chocolate (60-70% cocoa solids)
*170 g unsalted butter
*200 g white sugar
*75 g brown sugar
*2 teaspoons espresso grounds
*3 eggs (medium)
*150 g flour
*2 tablespoons pistachios, unsalted
*Dried rose petals (optional; available in Middle Eastern grocery stores)
*Cocoa powder, to dust on top

Preparation:
*Preheat oven to 180C. Butter the sides of a 20cm x 20cm baking dish. Dust the sides with flour, and tap out excess. Line the bottom with parchment paper.
*Remove cardamom seeds from their pods. Discard pods. Crush seeds in a pestle and mortar. If you don’t have a pestle and mortar, wrap the seeds in a newspaper and crush with a rolling pin (or the base of your frying pan). The seeds should not be crushed to a dust. The result should look like freshly cracked pepper. Set aside.
*Melt chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, and gently stir. Take off the heat and add white and brown sugar, espresso and cardamom powder and stir to combine. Set aside and allow to completely cool.
*Add eggs to chocolate mixture and stir to combine. Add flour and mix until smooth.
*Pour the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly. While baking, crush pistachios in a pestle and mortar. If you don’t have a pestle and mortar, wrap the pistachios in a newspaper and crush with a rolling pin (or the base of your frying pan).
*Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with moist crumbs. Cool in the pan on a rack, then use the parchment paper to lift out the brownies before slicing into squares.
*Adorn with pistachio dust, rose petals and a dusting of cocoa powder.

Comments

  1. Oh how evocatively you write! and how true.. increasingly I have turned to food as a way to reach out to others or to break a bad spell or to make a fresh start.. and its always been so fulfilling!! Beautiful post!

  2. How simple yet beautiful writing. Loved reading it as always.

  3. Such a real story and the recipe is one that I would love my kitchen to smell of right now. Congratulations on your feature with the New York times x

  4. Cooking has always been an emotional experience for me as well. Often cathartic, and more often than not, a way of expressing love. This was such a beautiful piece. The world is better for your 2nd day adventures in Roma….it would not have received the Spice Spoon otherwise xx.

  5. I really enjoy your posts and am so happy to see a new one! The piece in NYT is wonderful and so evocative. And those brownies… ufff. Those brownies! <3

  6. Marija Sultan says:

    Where ever your journey takes you, stay blessed.
    Love your posts and the delicious food.

  7. I was totally transported by this piece Shayma, beautiful written and the recipe sounds divine! Congratulations on being published by the NYT! Imen xx

  8. Lovely story, some of our best experiences come from turning the page. Congrats on the article!! And it’s pretty funny how anywhere in the world the answer to break ups is brownies haha.

  9. I would have never thought to put cardamon and chocolate together. They both seem to be such potent flavors, but I think your recipe fuses them together beautifully.

    Your eloquent writing hits the nail on the head (with a hammer) about the cathartic process of cooking. I practice a ton of yoga, and like yoga, cooking is a moving meditation.

    “The heart is cooking a pot of food for you. Be patient until it is cooked.” ~Rumi 🙂

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  11. I love the combination of flavours in this recipe. Combining traditional Persian flavours with chocolate – sounds very tempting!

  12. Jim Clark says:

    I’m sorry you went through this heartbreak but the rest of us are delighted you chose this for your therapy. Come to think of it, this may also be what he is lamenting…and will be forever from the looks of it. Thank you for the recipe, though.

  13. Hey there- planning on making these brownies this weekend. Was wondering if I could use an espresso shot instead of ground espresso? Have you tried making it that way? Wondering because I don’t have ground espresso and would have to make a trip to the store just for that! 🙂

  14. Thanks for this recipe.
    I don’t like white sugar. I prefer sugar cane.
    Do you think i can use only sugar can for this recipe ?
    Thanks for anwser

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  16. i fully understand you as i went thoriugh a same experience
    Time heals us, and we have to occupy ourselves in order not to get out of our minds

  17. Thank God for the sweet, hospitable souls like
    Cristina who enter our lives and evoke our spirits during life’s testing transitions.

    Reading your anecdotes that accompany your wonderful recipes is such a treat; you marry and preserve the cultures of the now and the homeland so well.

    As a college student with an enormous sweet tooth, I finally felt brave enough to undertake one of your recipes. The brownies came out so aromatic and chewy. My sisters, who were suspicious of combining the flavor of cardomom with the already perfect taste of chocolate, and my parents, who tend to stay away from chocolate, devoured them. This recipe is now a staple in my baking.

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Trackbacks

  1. […] The sight of Julia Roberts (as Elizabeth Gilbert, the writer whose memoirs the film is based on) eating all the beautiful carbohydrates Italy has to offer would make anybody hungry. In the throes of an existential crisis after two unsatisfactory relationships, she moves to Rome to rediscover her appetite – for food and for life. Set amongst the orange buildings and green ivy of the city’s iconic old architecture, she sets about learning its language and devouring its food. The film is divided into three main sections: Eat – Rome; Pray – India; and Love – Bali; of which my favourite is “Eat”, to the extent that I rewatched it 5 times before I ever got around to finishing the rest of the film. On a tangent, it reminds me of a piece of writing that I read years ago and hold close to my heart about finding yourself through food in Rome – a beautiful, heartfelt piece of writing by the lovely Shayma Saadat which I will link here. […]