Spiced: Unlock the Power of Spices to Transform Your Cooking

In another excellent offering, the team at America’s Test Kitchen provides practices for enhancing the flavor of snacks, entrees, and desserts through spices. They create 47 blends, dry mixes, spreads, and infusions, and sprinkle, rub, or drizzle them across more than 125 dishes. Each entry begins with a summary of “why this recipe works” that explains the balance of tastes, textures, and fragrances. The first chapter is devoted to pepper: unripened peppercorns are used in seared duck breasts with green peppercorn sauce (“the slightly gamy flavor of the duck... tames the pungency” of the peppercorns); while pink peppercorns, which are actually berries, add a hint of fruit to pan-seared steaks with brandy-pink peppercorn sauce. Rubs for meat, fish, and poultry fill the second chapter, while the third is an exploration of the hot and smoky flavors found in chilis and curries. Wasabi tuna salad, balanced with pickled ginger, is a highlight of a section centered around spiced sauces and finishing blends. For dessert, there is the familiar, such as pumpkin spice muffins (with allspice, ground ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon), and the daring, as in a ginger-tumeric frozen yogurt. Home cooks wanting a deeper appreciation of the contents of their spice cabinets will gain it from this unique collection. [em](May) [/em]