I have been pondering on spices and infusions lately. I have recently finished a Food as Medicine course done through Monash University and boy did it make me stop and think!
One of the things that had my brain turning over and over was the historical and modern use of spices as a medicine. I mean, I knew that ginger can help with car sickness, but I most certainly did not know that there are trials underway looking at the use of ginger to treat nausea and vomiting in chemo-therapy patients. Mr T took curcurmin for a while for a shoulder injury, that comes from turmeric, and there are studies that are indicating that cinnamon may help treat diabetes.
This is all wonderfully fascinating, but today we are looking at using spices for their aroma and flavours. So I was pondering, what if I was to infuse my coffee with aromatic spices? Will that work? Or will the coffee simply be too dominant? Shall we do an experiment? Yes please, I LOVE food experiments!
I decided to go with whole spices as they are far, far more aromatic. In fact the one spice I never buy ground is nutmeg, it is so easy to grate and the smell and taste! Delicious! Plus I like the way that the inside of the nutmeg looks like a tiny brain.
In the first jar I have put a split vanilla bean, in the second a whole cinnamon quill and a whole nutmeg which I chopped into a few pieces to release its fragrance.
Then I filled the jars up with freshly ground coffee and put the lids on. I am going to let them sit in the Cookie House for a week or two to infuse, I will let you know how it goes. Interested in how our experiment turned out? Click here.
