When Ajwain met Maiwein

[muckefuck]

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. 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.

Comments

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Aha! I had some whole and ground ajwan in my spice cupboard in England and became addicted to the stuff, then when I went looking for it in the US I was told it was a synonym for lovage seeds, and I now I have a big bag of the latter I can't get rid of and don't want to cook with. Up to now I've been thinking my memory must have been playing tricks on me, but if they're not in fact the same then I can go looking for ajwa(i)n again. Admittedly, not in the most promising place, since I've never seen it in French food.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my Panjabi dictionary actually identifies it with thyme. Apparently the same name is used for both in Hindi as well. Looks like the preferred French name is ajowan. It's apparently used in Egyptian and Iranian cookery as well, so hopefully their immigrant communities in France are big enough to stock some. In case you want to try your local Muslim spice emporium, the Arabic Wikipedia gives the name as نانخة, but this isn't even listed in Wehr. My best guess as a pronunciation is nānkhah though sources on the web also give "nakhwa" and "nanakhwah".

[wiped.livejournal.com]

in persian it's نانخواه ('nānkhāh', older 'nānkhwāh'), also referred to as زنیان ('zenyān') or خوردانه ('khordāne'). apparently these terms are used somewhat interchangeably with aniseed. there is also what seems to be an older term, اموس ('amus') which surely corresponds to the turkish 'emmus' (found here), though with this form i can't say whether the turkish borrowed from the persian or vice-versa.

for arabic, in addition to نانخة there is also كمون حبشي ('kamūn ḥabashī', ethiopian cumin) or كمون ملوكي ('kamūn mulūkī', kings' cumin) which i think is an older name not used as often today. my guess is that the arabic نانخة is a corruption or arabicization of persian نانخواه, simply because نانخة doesn't mean anything in arabic, whereas in persian نانخواه means roughly "[something that] wants bread", probably so named because it's frequently baked on bread.

i'm seeing both ਐਜਵਾਇਨ and ਜਵੈਣ on various sites for punjabi. interestingly, the shahmukhi form given on wikipedia corresponds to neither, and instead seems closer to hindi/urdu. on that note, it looks like the hindi word अजवायन given on many of these pages is just a genericword for the thymus genus. i wonder if अजवान refers more specifically to the plant in question.

do make that post about indian culinary terms and punjabi equivalents!