When I realized last weekend that the lovely farm stand peaches I’d bought needed to be used up sooner rather than later, I started thinking through my options and what I had on-hand. As I’ve mentioned before, my peach crisp is one of my go-to recipes, a lightly sweet, super summery dessert that checks all my major boxes. Healthy? Check. Perfect mix of spices? Check. Fiber & fruit? Check.
But I wanted to do something a little special, tweak my same-old recipe and try something different. And that’s when I landed on cardamom. The more I use it, the more I think that cardamom is a criminally underutilized spice in our cuisine. It’s most often found in Indian recipes (which I haven’t tried yet) and chai tea, but it’s also great combined with certain sweeter flavors—particularly pears, peaches, and chocolate. It’s fairly expensive (similar to saffron and vanilla), but a little goes a long way and so you can buy it once and have it on-hand for a long time.
So I added some cardamom to the crisp to give it a kick, as well as some almond extract which pairs wonderfully with both peaches and cardamom. Result? Delish!
I can’t wait to experiment with cardamom more, particularly with chocolate, as it’s so unusual—kind of like a mix between pumpkin pie spices and pepper. [Read more…]
finding time for cooking 