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Spices for a Kochi Christmas: plum cake, stew and duck roast
The spices Kochi kitchens buy in December, how much you need for a cake and a roast, and when to start soaking fruit.
In December, our counter fills with orders for cake spice. Kochi’s Christmas table, shaped by centuries of Syrian Christian, Portuguese and Dutch cooking, uses more whole spice than almost any other meal of the year.
Plum cake comes first, and many families soak the fruit in early November. For a 1 kg cake, you need about 1 teaspoon each of ground cinnamon and dry ginger, half a teaspoon of ground cloves, half a teaspoon of nutmeg and four or five crushed cardamom pods. Grind the cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg fresh at home if you can; the smell in the oven is very different. Our whole garam masala pack, ₹280 for 150 g, has cinnamon, cardamom and star anise enough for two cakes and a roast.
The Christmas morning stew, with appam, is gentle: whole cardamom, cloves, a stick of cinnamon, crushed black pepper, green chillies and ginger, all cooked in coconut milk. The pepper should be coarse and fresh, so crush it just before cooking.
Duck roast, or tharavu roast, is where the heat comes in: Kashmiri chilli for colour, fennel, coriander, pepper and a little garam masala, fried in coconut oil with shallots. For a 1.5 kg duck, plan on two tablespoons of chilli powder and one of pepper. Order your Christmas spices by the first week of December. After that, our Tuesday grinding fills up quickly, and courier times stretch.
