Sugar and spice and all things nice always leads me back to warm sugar dusted cinnamon donuts, pancakes with melting cinnamon sugar and sago pudding with cinnamon and honey. Scroll down for some recipes and ideas with this bark.
Cinnamon is the soft, inner bark
of the cinnamon tree, a camphor laurel, indigenous to Sri Lanka. As the
bark dries and contracts, it rolls itself into tight quills with a
sweet and intensely warm aroma. It’s very versatile and used in both
sweet and savoury dishes.
History of the golden spice From the earliest times one of the most sought after spices was
cinnamon. The demand for spices opened up trade routes between East and
West and was important in the history of food. In the 16th and 17th
century, cinnamon rivalled gold in value, complicated political
manoeuvres and treacherous journeys were undertaken, even territories
invaded all to procure this exotic spice. Cinnamon and other spices
enlivened otherwise bland dishes and also helped disguise those less
fresh!
Ideas with cinnamon
- Flavour good old chicken stock
with Asian spices and transform it into an Asian noodle broth. Add a
stick of cinnamon and star anise, chilli, ginger and Chinese rice wine
to stock and add shredded chicken or pork and buckwheat (soba) egg or
udon noodles.
- Stir ground cinnamon into brown sugar and use to sprinkle over
buckwheat pancakes; fruit before grilling for breakfast or dessert; or
tossed into vegetables for roasting.
- Use cinnamon to smoke pieces of pork or chicken. Sear
skinless chicken pieces or a pork fillet in a wok to brown. Place
ground cinnamon, sugar and crushed star anise in a foil cup/tray in the
bottom of a wok. Place a metal rack over foil cup and place meat to be
smoked on rack. Cover tightly and smoke on a high heat for 5 minutes
until cooked through. Serve with greens and a good-quality soya or
sweet chilli sauce.
- Poach pork fillet or chicken breasts in a stock made with
shredded ginger sautéed in sesame oil, soya, hoisin sauce, sherry,
cinnamon, star anise.
- Make a slow-cooking Moroccan spiced beef tagine with beef
shin, cinnamon sticks, cumin, coriander, orange rind, onions and quince
or dried apricots. Serve with cinnamon-flavoured couscous, raisins,
chopped herbs and roasted almonds.
- Make a spiced, frozen vanilla yoghurt or tofu ice cream. Stir
in chilli flakes, cinnamon and almond biscotti into softened low-fat
frozen yoghurt or tofu ice cream, and serve with grilled plums or
winter stone-fruit.
- Brew ground spices and whole cinnamon sticks in strong milky
tea to make a spicy, warming chai. Grind together fennel seeds,
cardamom pods, cloves, powdered ginger black pepper and black
peppercorns and whole cinnamon sticks for a rich, hot healing cuppa
which will keep winter bugs away.
5 Recipes with cinnamon: