Cumin of the night!

[muckefuck]

So either the frightening tales about Devon Avenue on a Friday night are nonsense or they only apply during the summer. The last time we did our shopping there after work at the end of the week, it was copacetic; and that was on the eve of Diwali. So we figured tonight would be fine for a trip to Patel Brothers, and we were right.

Before that, however, we needed a little food in us. Before we left, I was leaning toward Mysore Woodlands, only to discover it was "closed for remodeling". So we took a chance on newcomer Punjabi Dhabha. No surprises in the dinner buffet--unless you count the scrummy mango custard at the end. It was reasonable food for a reasonable price, but I wouldn't particularly recommend it unless only bhangra will do for musical accompaniment during your meal.

The brand new television arrives tomorrow, and monshu wanted something showy and pure Bollywood for the debut viewing. If we had planned ahead, we could easily have ordered something through NetFlix, but we didn't so we're stuck with gross-out comedies and touching tales of childhood and loss at the moment. No matter; $25 at Al-Mansoor Video netted us both Devdas (Khan/Rai) and Waris Shah, so we will not suffer for spectacle.

We left the food shopping till last so we could pick up fridge/freezer items. One of the ingredients on monshu's list was "black cumin". "Is that just a variety of cuminseed that's black in colour?" I asked him. "I have no idea." At first, I thought it might be another name for "kalonji", but then I spotted a package labeled "kala jeera" and remembered that जीरा jeeraa was Hindi for "cumin".

When we got home, I discovered that black cumin is another name for kalonji (Nigella sativa). Confusingly, it is also the name of a completely unrelated species (Bunium persicum) that is only used in Persian and North Indian cooking. Oh, well; it's for a biryani, which is like mole in both the number of ingredients and their variability from cook to cook, so I imagine it won't make much difference either way.

I further discovered, thanks to the magic that is Wikipedia, that (a) Nigella sativa is used throughout Eurasia and (b) it has more freakin' common names than anything else in our spice cabinet. Seriously, here's a selection:

Basque: ezkarte, albetxe, beltxanburu, beltxamuru
Catalan: pebreta, barba d'ermità, sanuj
Czech: černucha setá, černý kmín
English: black cumin, edible love-in-a-mist, fennel flower, nutmeg flower, Roman coriander, blackseed, black caraway, (black) onion seed, black sesame
French: cheveux de Vénus, cumin noir, nigelle (cultivée), nigelle de Crète, poivrette, toute épice
Galician: aliprive, aleprive, nigela, cominhos negros
German: (Echter) Schwarzkümmel, Römischer Kümmel, Schwarzer Coriander, Zwiebelsame
Hungarian: borzaskata mag, feketekömény, kerti katicavirág, parasztbors
Italian: nigella, cumino nero, cuminella, erba spezie, gittaione, grano nero, melanzio domestico
Portuguese: nigela, cominho-preto
Spanish: ajenuz, arañuel, neguilla, neguilla hortense, toda especia
Turkish: (kara) çörek otu, ekilen, karamuk, sehniz, siyah kimyon, siyah susam

You'd think there'd be a moratorium on new designations at some point--particularly those that already belong to other plants. Furthermore, since it's not a spice English-speakers normally cook with, we're prone to pick up whatever term the immigrants near us use, be it kalonji, ketzah, chamushka, chernushka, habbat al-barakah, or siyah daneh. If only we'd held onto Middle English gith instead of wantonly tossing it away on the corncockle!

Comments

[gorkabear.livejournal.com]

That spice is the typical one you might run into at certain herbolarians and then wonder what it is used for! Thanks!

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

black cumin is another name for kalonji (Nigella sativa).
I was just about to go "oh no it isn't!" ...and then I read the rest of your post. I have come across "black cumin" that looked an awful lot like regular cumin but darker and longer: it smelled like caraway. Now I think it was probably bunium persicum. I haven't (AFAICT) encountered it in any Persian or Central Asian cooking yet, though.

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

And this is why I hate translating recipes, as I'm never really sure with certain spices exactly what the writer of said recipe MEANS because of instances like the above ...

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Do the Germans use the same word for cumin and caraway? Somebody does, but I can't remember who.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Actually, a number of Europeans do. For instance, one of the Catalan names for caraway is comí de Madrid "cumin of Madrid", and some Spanish-speakers call it comino de prado "meadow cumin" (though I believe the names alcaravia and alcarahueya are more common).

But, yes, although German Kümmel is historically derived from Latin cuminum, it normally refers to caraway and cumin is known as Kreuzkümmel ("cross cumin", from the arrangement of the leaves; also Mutterkümmel "mother cumin", weißer Kümmel "white cumin", römischer Kümmel "Roman cumin", or welscher Kümmel "foreign cumin").

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Now I know that the Kümmel is caraway and I need Kreuzkümmel (which we just ran out of. I'm unwilling to take a car to Devon in this weather, so I may have to buy the expensive stuff in the neighborhood.)

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

OMG Nigella Sativa... my mother (Polish) was very excited to find it when visiting me; I took her shopping at Nasr, a local Arabic supermarket, where it was available in 3 or 4 packages manufactured in various Middle-Eastern-through-South-Asian locales... each labelled with a totally different English name. But she recognized it by sight.