Cardamom on my tongue

Cardamom is one of my favourite flavours and it pops up in unexpected places. Cardamom ice cream like they make in India is a revelation. I was recently swooning with delight on the windswept street of Curry Mile in Rusholme, as I sucked a long thin cardamom and pistachio ice cream, a kulfi, bought from an old robed man with a stall that I've never seen again. Cardamom spiced tea is sublime. In my hippy days at the Confest festivals, the chai tent was the place to chill on an embroidered cushion with a pottery mug of honeyed spiced tea and a bearded friend to chat with. I brewed cardamom with lots of white sugar in strong black coffee for my ecclectic friends in the share-house on Ruskin Street, and now, I can be found pottering in my quiet house while the kids are at school baking cardamom and courgette cake with lime zest cream cheese icing thanks to Jamie Oliver. Mostly however, I use cardamom in curries for it's unique and intriguing flavour.

Last week I talked about my father. This week my long suffering mother needs some love. Poor mum! My father was such a blaze of attention-grabbing energy, that my mother is a shadowy figure in my early childhood memories, reduced to a series of images: throwing her head back laughing with friends on a sunlit balcony, her hands placing a ribboned cake before me on my birthday, a sense of her body always near, moving around me, in the car seat before me arguing with my father about directions. I remember her striped sundresses, her rows of shoes that I wanted to wear, her make-up box of red lipsticks and blue eyeshadows, and her glittering jewels in various patterned boxes that never failed to fascinate me. I spent hours on her bed, just touching them, placing beads around my neck and claiming them for my own one day. She smelled of Miss Dior or Nina Ricci with a faint whiff of Benson and Hedges. She was sometimes very cross and it made me desperate to please her.

After dad died it was like he made a space for mum. We grew closer, sharing our grief. We drank too much together and revealed things that only the best of friends would ever share. I realised that my mother was a poetic and complex soul - that she had taken on the role of mother with great fervour and almost neurotic need to be perfect, juggling running our home with flamboyance and precision with a demanding career firstly as accounts manager at my dad's production company, then as a freelance food stylist to film, television and print, and finally, when the stockmarket crashed, taking much of their savings with it, my mother became the family provider as dad was approaching 70. She bought a fruit and vegetable shop and went to the market every morning at 4am. I was in my late teens by then and I remember those years as they transformed her from a glamourous mother who entertained and travelled the world, to a woman with calloused hands from cutting pineapples and stacking spuds. She cut her hair blunt and short, wore no make-up and worried alot.

Eventually she sold the shop and soon after, her best friend, her great love, her treasured and passionately admired husband died.

Mum eventually emerged from the grief with such grace and beauty, like a butterfly shaky at first with freedom. She wrote poetry to share her feelings, showing to me in delicate increments, the woman she was deep inside, beyond mother and wife. She went on to have a successful career again in food styling and gathered around her a vibrant and fun community of women who love to party, play bridge, travel and paint.

I always thought it was my father I was most like - thinking that my desire to create, to write and express, to feel life so keenly - came from him. But I realise now that my mother was as much of an artist as him and that her flexibility, will and pragmatism are traits I could do well to emulate.

This is one of my favourite food memories from my youth: my mother's cardamom spiced beef rendang, taught to her originally by Charmaine Solomon.

Mum and Charmaine Solomon's Malaysian beef rendang (with cardamom)

(serves four with, hopefully some left-overs because it tastes even better the next day)

1.5 kg casserole steak cut into strips

4 medium potatoes cut into mouthful sized pieces

2 onions chopped

2 tbs chopped garlic

1 tbs chopped ginger

1 tbs chopped galangal (if unavailable use more ginger)

6 red chillies, deseeded

400 ml coconut milk

11/2 tsp salt

1 tsp turmeric powder

2 tsp chilli powder

3 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

3 cardamom pods, crushed

1 stalk lemongrass, bruised

1/2 c tamarind liquid

2 tsp sugar

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius.

In a heavy based casserole dish, fry the beef in a little oil till lightly browned.

To make the paste, put the onion, garlic, ginger, galangal, chillies and 1/2 a cup of water into a blender and mix until it forms a smooth paste.

Pour over the meat and add the remaining ingredients except for the tamarind and sugar. Bring to the boil.

Turn off the heat and add the tamarind and sugar and put the lid on the casserole. Put into the oven and cook for at least 1 hour or until the oil has separated from the gravy and the gravy has dried up.

Serve with rice and coriander - I like a bit of Greek yoghurt and lime with mine. 

I must admit, as a mother with two jobs and a blog to attend to, I often cheat and use a pre-made spice mix for my curries. As long as I add some of my own ingredients: extra fresh garlic and ginger, a stick of lemongrass, a squeeze of lime and a dash of fish sauce for green curries etc, I find them totally satisfactory.