On privilege + cardamom coconut shortbread ✨ ✨
How are you doing this week? I've been swinging between anxious, exhausted, and cathartic, and furious and miserable at everything that's been happening around us. But, I have also been feeling slightly happy and grateful. Part of the reason is due to new subscribers, 50 of you to be exact. Thank you for putting faith in my minor newsletter — it means a lot. Hopefully you like the work I'm doing, and find it helpful. If you do, share it with others won't you?
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about cardamom. Not just in terms of how much its fragrance comforts me every morning when I make chai, but, more importantly, in terms of privilege.
Cardamom — green, black, pod, powder, as fine green husks buried in amma's tea dabba, in payasam or paneer curry — has been omnipresent in our family kitchen. It's there, and yet I never see it sometimes. During the whole process of making chai (to which I liberally add many fat pinches of cardamom powder) and after, I constantly smell my fingers, wondrous that something so small has the potential to perfume anything that comes its way. But after that, I don't think about cardamom at all. My mind has replaced it with countless other thoughts and tasks. Until I force myself to think about cardamom again, even though it has always been in my kitchen, and in my life. Like privilege that we don't really notice, which is itself proof that we are privileged. Privileged enough to ignore something that has given us a leg up all our lives. It is present yet forgotten, like the spices we have at home. I'm not saying that cardamom is a privileged spice. It definitely isn't saffron, but like saffron it is expensive and extremely labour intensive, and unlike saffron, harvesting is done mostly by migrants.
In my previous issue, I touched upon the moral superiority of vegetarianism in India, which was a more explicit privilege, whereas with this issue, and the cardamom, I want to emphasise the privilege — whether caste, class, gender, race — that exists without obvious recognition. Privilege that we routinely embody and ignore in everyday life. This is tough to interrogate, tougher to challenge. But we must. Whether it's access to cardamom every day or the access to education, housing, and basic rights; the right to pursue a career or the right to eat beef; individual consumption might seem so far removed from the food system but the truth is that there is no social justice without food justice. Or land access. Or organisation of labour. Or the ending of homogenisation of food cultures, and problematic agricultural practices. There is simply no cardamom without privilege.
Cardamom, coconut shortbread biscuits
Ingredients
- A cup and a quarter of all purpose flour/maida; you could do a combination of whole wheat and all purpose
- 2 tbsp roast semolina (optional)
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar/icing sugar
- 1 cup butter/ + 2 tsp coconut milk
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 5 tsp cardamom powder
- the tiniest pinch of salt; or use salted butter
- 1/4 cup chopped nuts and dessicated coconut
- 1 tsp rose water (optional)
Method
Make sure your butter is soft, and you oven is pre-heated to 350 F or 180 C. Cream butter and sugar in a bowl for 5 minutes, till pale and fluffy. Scrape down sides consistently when creaming. Add the cardamom powder, salt (if using unsalted butter), coconut milk, rose water, and mix well. Sift the flour and roast semolina before adding to the above mixture, and mix till it's a dough. If it's too wet, sprinkle in more flour. If it's too dry, add in more coconut milk. The consistency should be such that you can either roll it into a log and then cut or roll it into spheres. It should make about 15-16. Spread the chopped nuts and dessicated coconut on a plate and then dip each sphere in it and flatten so that one side is coated in the nut-coconut mixture. Place on a tray and bake till golden, say 15 minutes but also keep an eye on it so it doesn't burn. Remove and cool on a wire rack.
Notes
- You could chill the dough before baking but I like my shortbread biscuits to spread and flatten, unlike a traditionally thick shortbread.
- I love the combination of rosewater and cardamom. But rosewater isn't essential here — you can add just about any other essence.
- If you don't want butter, ghee is a really good substitute. Or oil, if you're vegan.
- I like the addition of coconut milk here since it compliments the dessicated coconut on top. If you add coconut oil instead of butter, this is truly a lovely coconutty shortbread.
- Ooh. Do a snickerdoodle but instead of cinnamon-sugar, roll this in cardamom-sugar, flatten and bake.
Miscellaneous
- It's time we had difficult conversations with family and friends about the privileges of caste, race, class, gender and religion. For my fellow Indians, here is a very good primer by the brilliant Dalit-American artist and journalist Thenmozhi Soundararajan and Dalit Tamil scholar, artist, and activist Sinthujan Varatharajah. Read it, question the systems of privilege that have coddled us, confront that privilege, and do your part in calling people out. Let the activism begin at home. I've been doing it for a while now and it is necessary.
- Here is another primer courtesy of Smriti Bhoker and Deyir Nalo from Feminism in India.
- Read this powerful piece over at Vittles by Melissa Thompson on black erasure in the British food industry.
- While you're at Vittles, maybe read my piece on the pleasure and politics of eating mangoes? It was cathartic to write, and I'm glad I did.
- I want to end with music, specifically this song that has been on my mind these last two weeks. It makes me nostalgic for the 90s I wish I knew.
I would love to hear from you — idea, shoutout, or just a chat about Shelf Offering. Reach me at seriouscheats@gmail.com.