Want to elevate your cooking? Use great spices.
“It would be very sad for me to cook without spices,” Spice King Lior Lev Sercarz told the Journal. Chef Sercarz is owner of La Boîte in New York City and co-founder of the Galilee Culinary Institute.
Israel-born and France-trained, Sercarz moved to the United States in 2002; he opened La Boîte in 2006. For the last 16 years or so, he has been getting people excited about using spices. Spices come as singles and blends, some are less complicated others are more so.
“They bring a third dimension to your food,” he said.
Spices are ingredients. Just as you would buy good produce and proteins, you need to seek out quality spices to incorporate into your cooking.
When shopping, he suggests:
- Look at the color of the spice. If it’s uniform and there are no specks of other colors, it’s good.
- If a package says that it’s a whole spice, it should be whole and not part powder and part whole.
- Buy small packages to begin with, so you can taste the product, get familiar with it and know if you like it
- Try a couple of different suppliers until you find ones you like.
“Then when you bring that spice into your kitchen, open it up, taste it, smell it,” he said. “It needs to have a good scent and a great flavor. If it’s kind of mild and tasteless or odorless, then don’t buy it again from that particular producer or company.”
Be sure to try out the spices you already own. “You are going to add them to your food; it’s important to know what they’re going to do to your dish,” he said.
Sercarz is the author of four cookbooks, including “The Art of Blending,” “The Spice Companion” and “Mastering Spice.”
His latest, “A Middle Eastern Pantry,” brings Sercarz back to his roots. It goes behind the scenes of that cooking world, showcasing the growers, farmers and bakers, and the “art form” of a pantry.
“A lot of us don’t even have a pantry in our homes because we for some mysterious reason look at canned food or preserved food as lesser than fresh food,” he said.
Sercarz wanted to highlight this amazing region, where the pantry items are still used on a daily basis.
“There’s a tradition of capturing product at their peak, and fermenting, drying, canning [and] pickling them, so that they’re available year-round, when these produce actually are not in season,” he said.
Sercarz’s versions and vision of traditional recipes fill the book. “I’d like to get people excited about cooking these interpretations of traditional recipes,” he said.
For a taste of “A Middle Eastern Pantry,” Sercarz’s recipes for Sumac Onion Salad and Hummus Tahina are below. They are two of his favorites.
“A bowl of hummus with some onions on the side [and] a warm pita bread with some olive oil makes me very, very happy,” he said. “I don’t need a whole lot more in my life.”
Sometimes the simplest foods really are the best ones.
“Some preparation takes a little bit longer,” he said. “But it’s not necessarily about the complexity of it or having a lot of different ingredients … [Sometimes] the most simple piece of produce, fish or meat that’s simply seasoned and grilled, baked or cooked is a happy place.”
Learn more about Lior Lev Sircarz, La Boîte, Galilee Culinary Institute and “A Middle Eastern Pantry.”
For the full conversation, listen to the podcast:
Watch the interview:
Sumac Onion Salad
Serves 6
1 large red onion, halved and very thinly sliced lengthwise
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses
1 tablespoon ground sumac (9 grams)
½ teaspoon fine sea salt (3 grams)
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper (1 gram)
¼ cup roughly chopped fresh flat parsley leaves
¼ cup fresh pomegranate arils
Fill a large bowl with ice water. Soak the onion slices for 1 hour to crisp them up. Drain well and blot dry with paper towels, being careful not to damage the delicate slices.
Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk together the oil, lemon juice, pomegranate molasses, sumac, salt and pepper to combine well. Set aside to allow the spices to bloom while the onion soaks.
Transfer the drained onion slices to a clean bowl. Add the dressing, parsley, and pomegranate arils, toss and serve.
Hummus Tahina
Makes 2 cups
1½ cups cooked chickpeas or canned, preferably organic, rinsed and drained
½ cup tahini
½ cup ice water
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
¼ teaspoon ground cumin (0.5 grams), plus more to taste
Salt
2 tablespoons Tahini Sauce (recipe follows), or more to taste, for serving
Extra-virgin olive oil, for serving
Paprika, for garnish (optional)
In a food processor, combine the chickpeas, tahini, ice water, lemon juice, cumin and a pinch of salt.
Process until completely smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning with more salt and/or cumin if necessary.
To serve, spoon some or all of the hummus into a serving bowl. Spread and swoosh the hummus to the sides, creating a well in the center. Spoon as much of the tahini sauce in the center as you like. Drizzle with oil and dust with more cumin and/or paprika (if using).
Tahini Sauce
Makes 1 cup
Ice
½ cup tahini
1 lemon, halved
Salt
In a measuring cup with a spout, mix ½ cup water with a handful of ice and stir until very cold.
Remove the ice.
In a bowl, whisk together the tahini and juice of ½ lemon. Slowly drizzle in the water, whisking constantly, until the mixture is creamy and smooth. (If the sauce breaks, make another batch of ice water and add a few drops at a time until the sauce comes together.) Taste and season with salt and more lemon juice, if you like.
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Reprinted with permission from “A Middle Eastern Pantry: Essential Ingredients for Classic and Contemporary Recipes: A Cookbook.” Copyright c 2023 by Lior Lev Sercarz. Photography copyright c 2023 by Dan Perez.Published by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Debra Eckerling is a writer for the Jewish Journal and the host of “Taste Buds with Deb.” Subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform. Email Debra: tastebuds@jewishjournal.com.
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