![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
May. 3rd, 2011 11:22 am
When Ajwain met Maiwein
We have a new addition to our spice cabinet: ajwain. When I saw it on the menu Thursday night, I naturally assumed it was a synonym for some other spice I'd already heard about. Well, it isn't, and our first taste was intriguing enough to prompt me to buy a bag at Patel on Friday. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu and I spent the rest of the weekend experimenting with it.
Saturday night he roasted a chicken with a rub of garlic, cumin, ajwain, and lemon juice. The cooking smell was just amazing. The ajwain adds a note of thyme that goes well with poultry. I made some pita chips that night with the seven-grain pita from Middle Eastern Bakery and--remembering our ajwain ka paraatha at Klay Oven--sprinkled them liberally with ajwain seeds. Despite the coating of oil, most failed to cling, but those which fell off roasted to a beautiful dark brown.
monshu put these to good use the next night when he incorporated them into a mustard-based marinade for tuna steaks. In fact, I thought the effect was even better than with the chicken. Clearly more messing about is called for!
A note on nomenclature: As I always am when learning a new Hindi word, I was curious what the Panjabi equivalent would be. Searches on what I supposed to be the Gurmukhi spelling weren't turning up anything, so I thought if I tried the equivalent to ka paraatha I might find it in the name of the prepared bread. But "ਦਾ ਪਰਾਂਠਾ" returned only carbon-copies of the Wikipedia entry for "paratha", which set me on a merry chase for the correct Panjabi spelling.
It took me a good while with the dictionary I have at home, but I finally found it: ਪਰੌਂਠਾ. That is, it has the (nasalised) vowel transcribed au and pronounced [ɔ]. The Panjabi for ajwain, as it turns out, has the front equivalent; that is, ਜਵੈਣ is transcribed jawaiṇ and pronounced [ˈd͡ʒʌʋɛɲ]. This prompted me to check a few other terms and, sure enough, Panjabis call "raita" [ˈɾɛta] although "mustard" is still [ˈɾai] (although colloquially also [ˈɾəi] or [ˈɾɛ]). Hmm...I feel a post of Indian culinary terms and their Panjabi equivalents coming on.
monshu and I spent the rest of the weekend experimenting with it.Saturday night he roasted a chicken with a rub of garlic, cumin, ajwain, and lemon juice. The cooking smell was just amazing. The ajwain adds a note of thyme that goes well with poultry. I made some pita chips that night with the seven-grain pita from Middle Eastern Bakery and--remembering our ajwain ka paraatha at Klay Oven--sprinkled them liberally with ajwain seeds. Despite the coating of oil, most failed to cling, but those which fell off roasted to a beautiful dark brown.
monshu put these to good use the next night when he incorporated them into a mustard-based marinade for tuna steaks. In fact, I thought the effect was even better than with the chicken. Clearly more messing about is called for!A note on nomenclature: As I always am when learning a new Hindi word, I was curious what the Panjabi equivalent would be. Searches on what I supposed to be the Gurmukhi spelling weren't turning up anything, so I thought if I tried the equivalent to ka paraatha I might find it in the name of the prepared bread. But "ਦਾ ਪਰਾਂਠਾ" returned only carbon-copies of the Wikipedia entry for "paratha", which set me on a merry chase for the correct Panjabi spelling.
It took me a good while with the dictionary I have at home, but I finally found it: ਪਰੌਂਠਾ. That is, it has the (nasalised) vowel transcribed au and pronounced [ɔ]. The Panjabi for ajwain, as it turns out, has the front equivalent; that is, ਜਵੈਣ is transcribed jawaiṇ and pronounced [ˈd͡ʒʌʋɛɲ]. This prompted me to check a few other terms and, sure enough, Panjabis call "raita" [ˈɾɛta] although "mustard" is still [ˈɾai] (although colloquially also [ˈɾəi] or [ˈɾɛ]). Hmm...I feel a post of Indian culinary terms and their Panjabi equivalents coming on.