Cumin: The Pungency You Want
Try to avoid the Cheech voice
Nearly anyone who enjoys eating Tex-Mex food or Southwest food is familiar with the flavor of cumin. Cumin has an un-spicy heat and a depth of flavor, a sweetness, which makes it such a good playmate with other flavors. As a flavor, it is almost always associated with foods from both of those areas. However, such was not always the case.
Chef Roberto Santibañez spoke to Splendid Table and explained how cumin came from Spain. “First we need to remember that the Spain we know now was not the same Spain 600 years ago, because that part of the world was dominated by the Moors, by the Arabs. The Spanish who came in those trips to the Americas were more Moors than the people we now know in Spain.”[1]