Sugar & Spice
This newsletter has a sweet tooth. Anna Sulan looks sugar plays in popular culture and Chloe-Rose shares two recipes to showcase saffron's sweet and savoury sides.
This newsletter has a sweet tooth. Anna Sulan looks at the role sugar plays in literature and popular culture, and how that builds a narrative of the ingredient away from its roots and histories. Chloe-Rose shares two recipes using saffron to showcase the spice’s sweet and savoury applications. We also decided, as a treat - to open this newsletter up to all, to get a glimpse into what a paid subscriber newsletter looks like!
You are also getting this newsletter on a Wednesday instead of a Tuesday because we’ve been on deadline for a grant application that could help us fund a print zine! If you are aware of any research or media grants related to food and drink please feel free to share! We will be compiling your suggestions in a list to share in our free newsletter so others know about these opportunities too.
Spin Spin Sugar
By Anna Sulan Masing
Sugar is an ingredient that I think about a lot. We had a sweet jar as kids, so that every time we received sweets (lollies, if you’re a kiwi) then they went into the jar and we had to ask our mother for permission to have a sweet. Sugar was a treat. As I have gotten older I’ve learnt about the sugar trade [slavery], I have seen the demonization of it in ‘clean eating’, and I have realised that I don’t have a ‘sweet tooth’.
Not having a sweet tooth does not mean I don’t like sweet things – I really do, and have been known to order two desserts at a restaurant – it just means I very rarely crave sweet things. Growing up I really enjoyed baking, and I still do, but then I don’t particularly want to eat my wares, except making muesli! (is that baking?) Which, as I mentioned in the last newsletter, is because I find most muesli too sweet. I have also found that if I have too much sugar I break out in hives.
What has recently occupied my mind is how sugar figures within our culture; stories are how we understand the world - what narratives do we tell about sugar? The sweet stuff features in many places, my favourites include Rumi’s poem ‘Dissolver of Sugar’ which to me speaks of heartbreak; and the ‘Sugar’ chapter in Gertrude Stein’s book Food, which begins “A violent luck and a whole sample and even then quiet.”
Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ is “an absolute banger of a tune” as I saw it being described on twitter during Christmas – this is correct! But when you google it the top searches are ‘why is the Sugar Plum Fairy evil?’ or ‘is the Sugar Plum Fairy evil?’ and various breakdowns look at the meaning of this – somewhat random – star solo piece. The Sugar Plum Fairy welcomes Clara into the magical kingdom of delectable delights, she is otherworldly, of childhood dreams. In Mary Poppin’s ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’ Julie Andrews makes us understand that sweetness makes everything seem better – it hides, it helps. With pop songs sugar and sweetness is love and lust, and searching for desire “Ah sugar, ah honey, honey, you are my candy girl and you got me wanting you'' sing the Archies. When creating the playlist for this essay I was surprised - uncomfortable? - to see the cover art for Sylvia Robinson’s ‘Sweet Stuff’; she stands tall, bold, bathed is a dangerous red with a barely clothed, subservient figure on the ground reaching up to her; there is a line in the song “that wasn’t so bad after all, was it?”. Navigating the idea of sugar and sweetness in lyrical form there is a sense of trickery, pleasure, good vs evil, indulgence; there is seduction, there is complication. Pop music as a cannon, seems to hint at the story of sugar that is below the surface.
Sidney W. Mintz, in Sweetness and Power, talks about how sugar, almost unknown until 1650, soon became enamoured by Europe, “the wealthy had become inveterate sugar eaters, and sugar figured in their medicine, literary imager and displays of rank”. Sugar has been embedded in Western cultural language since it entered its realms, the mystification of sugar building empires, economies and brutal systems.
It is impossible to talk about sugar without talking about the Caribbean. Keith Ellis’ article ‘Images of Sugar in English and Spanish Caribbean Poetry’ tracks how sugar is written about in poetry. As you can imagine the earlier works are by colonialists and focus on the commodity – the status of the crop. He cites a poem by James Grainger written in 1766, ‘The Sugar Cane’, “a work that provides tough-minded advice about suitable soils […] The poem is readable as a manual for sugar-cane cultivation.”
Edward Said echoes this with reference, in Culture & Imperialism, that within literary scholarship there is a failure to take into account the “geographical notation” and mapping of territory within Western fiction. This creates a relationship of hierarchy of spaces “the metropolitan economy is seen as dependent upon overseas systems of territorial control”. He relates this to the way Thomas Bertram’s slave plantation – which would have been a sugar plantation - in Antigua is spoken about in Mansfield Park “[it] is mysteriously necessary to the poise and the beauty of Mansfield Park”; these spaces belong to, and are in the space of, England (‘home’) the are not written about as countries or entities in themselves – the colony and its products are necessary to the fictional story of both of Jane Austen et al and also of the British Empire. Commodity is the focus of the space. Said goes on to show how the island and sugar – consumed by many British, owned by a very few – provides wealth, propriety, comfort and an “added good […] because, Austen tells us pointedly in the final chapters, she wants to ‘restore every body, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.”
The second representation of sugar that Ellis speaks about is one of nostalgic imagery, one he calls Idealism. This centres the plant and the location, devoid of commodity and also of labour, to quote Nathaniel Weekes’ 1754 poem Barbados “an island where the sugar-cane is waving in the breeze”. There is a (colonial) patriotic notion to this, but that is a whole other essay!
Where we get to truly see the sugar and it’s fields in full complexity is when the authors change. The shift away from the colonial voice – of course – brings the multiplicity of what this ingredient is, has been, and will be, out in force. The work that is cited in this section is visceral and arresting. Poetry seems to be the perfect way to investigate this ingredient, the planting cycle, the labour, the brutality and the contrasting sweetness of flavour to its histories. Faustin Charles, a Trinidadian poet, first lines in ‘Sugar Cane’ exemplifies this:
Cane is sweet sweat slain;
cane is labour, unrecognised, lost and unrecovered;
sugar is the sweet swollen pain of the years;
sugar is slavery's immovable strain.
Cane is a slaver;
cane is bitter,
very bitter,
in the sweet blood of life.
We distance sugar from the soil, the toil of this crop, so easily – not just in colonial literature but in the contemporary when we write, talk, cook, eat as we fixate on the beautifully displayed sweet foods of cakes and desserts. The words we sing wrap sugar up in love, sometimes pain, but never asking the question of what it is and what it is built on? As always, I want to think about how often we let small things slide, weave them thoughtlessly into the everyday stories which continue to build on narratives that remove them so far from their beginnings – the soil they are grown in, and by who.
To quote Ellis, as his contextualises the third category of sugar poetry:
“the curse of sugar, the original sin of popular Caribbean experience. Sugar cane in the region was the prompter of slavery and of the diaspora, the raison d'être of colonialism, the inspiration for cupidity and for the capitalist exploitation of labour, and the inciter of rage against those who would not submit meekly to this exploitation.”
The Sugar, Sugar playlist for this essay.
What Anna ate & drank:
Due to heartbreak eating has been difficult, and at times impossible. I think I lived off mixed nuts and herbal tea for two weeks. But I have been sustained by people. The first meal I had in two weeks was Hainanese chicken rice, made by Chloe. I cried. The kindness of someone’s cooking, done with love. Chloe also made me soup. Another friend gave me a big bowl of fruit and yogurt which I could nibble on all day as my belly refused to allow for much to settle.
A little later, when appetite came back - one friend sent me bagels from Monty’s Deli, a Twitter friend sent soup and sake from Top Cuvee and Supa Ya Ramen. Work friends, who I only know online, sent me a voucher for drinks, which meant I could go into my new flat with more than just tears, bring some actual joy; and wine for Chinese New Year! In my new flat there is joint dinner cooking and we had a birthday, fancy meal kit dinner, the act of these gives my body purpose. Food and drink are truly nourishments, for the heart, the soul and are expressions of love.
Saffron, two ways
Our first commissioned piece for our Soil season looked at Saffron cultivation in Spain. Barcelona-based writer Esme Fox explores the history of how saffron became a staple in Spanish cuisine and explains how the high-price tag associated with saffron doesn’t necessarily mean the spice is as expensive as we think it is. What I love about saffron is that it’s complex flavour – bitter, floral, earthy – means it has many applications. So this week I’m sharing recipes with saffron that are savoury and sweet. To bring the most out of the saffron, it is best to toast the strands in a dry pan, crush them into a powder and then infuse them into a warm liquid. This process is called ‘blooming’ which I find particularly poetic given saffron comes from one of my favorite signs of spring: the crocus flower.
Saffron and Rice
My first introduction to saffron was through rice which isn’t surprising because the two are a good pair. If you’re from the States, this rice is similar to what you’d receive on a combo plate at a Mexican restaurant. I’ve seen this dish called ‘Spanish’ or ‘Mexican’ rice interchangeably and at some point I’ll do a deep dive into its origins, but all I really know is that in my family home saffron was kept around for this recipe and it is the reason I always have a vial in the spice rack. This is one of the first recipes I remember asking my grandmother for when I moved into my own place, though my recipe has some alterations. She uses tomato sauce in place of tomato paste, which you can do, just reduce ½-1 cup stock for an 8oz tin of tomato sauce. I make this in my cast iron skillet when I want a little more of a crust on the rice but this recipe also works well in a large saucepan. If I have a bag of frozen veggies on the go or some cooked green beans in the fridge I might also toss those in with the tomatoes. This recipe is for 2 with enough leftover to have with a fried egg and some beans for brunch (as shown in the photo above). I usually serve this along with beans and a grilled protein, sometimes just with beans. If I haven’t made it clear already, I eat a lot of beans. As this is one of those staple home recipes, my measurements are more guesstimates, just make sure you have a 2:1 ratio of liquid to rice. If you’re using a saucepan you can also use the knuckle test to make sure you’ve added enough liquid.
3-5 saffron threads
2 cups stock
1tbs tomato paste
2 tbs olive oil
1 onion diced
1 clove garlic
½ tsp (?) ground Mexican oregano
½- 1 tsp salt
1 large pinch ground cumin
1 cup long grain rice
1 tomato, diced
Wash your rice.
Warm stock and mix with tomato paste (or sauce).
Toast saffron in a dry pan over medium-high heat until it becomes fragrant and add to stock mixture (you can crush them first but I usually don’t because I want to get dinner going and can’t be bothered).
Add oil to hot pan and when it becomes shiny add garlic, onion, oregano and cumin, turn down heat to medium and sweat the onions and garlic until translucent 3-5 minutes.
Add rice to the pan and stir constantly until it begins to stick.
Add tomato and stir until tomatoes release their juices or the mixture is an even reddish tone.
Add stock, give the rice a stir to ensure it is evenly distributed and bring to a simmer. Cover with a lid and cook for 20-25 minutes.
Turn off heat, fluff the rice with a fork and let sit covered for at least 10 minutes before eating.
Saffron-Citrus Drizzle Loaf
This recipe is a pretty basic pound cake jazzed up. I have tried a few variations on the recipe with ground nuts (replace 25 g flour with 25 grams ground almonds) and with lemon and blood orange. Against the saffron’s floral qualities, the sweetness of the orange juice and zest resulted in a subtle orange blossomy flavour which paired well with a pistachio dust (I had some to use up). More tart citrus like lemon will have less of a floral saffron flavour which will instead present itself as a more earthy flavour. If you want to try and make a vegan version, I’d recommend trying it with this recipe for olive oil citrus cake, just infuse your non-dairy milk with the saffron.
12-14 threads saffron
125g (¾ cup) warm whole milk
125g (6oz) butter, melted
150g (¾ cup) caster sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
225g (1 ½ c) flour
1 citrus fruit, zested and juiced
150 g (1 c) icing sugar
Grease and line a 9x5” loaf pan (1kg loaf pan) with parchment paper.
Preheat oven to 175ºC (350ºF).
In a dry pan gently toast the saffron over medium low heat until fragrant (30 seconds - 1 minute), crush the saffron with a mortar and pestle, or with the back of a spoon against a cutting board until it starts to make a fine powder. Transfer saffron dust to warm milk and let sit.
Sift together, plain flour, salt and baking powder, set aside.
With a mixer or a whisk, beat eggs, sugar and citrus zest together until they are very light and pale.
Slowly add melted butter and mix until it has an even consistency.
Add ½ the citrus juice to the saffron and milk mixture and alternate adding the ¼ of each the milk and flour mixtures to your batter. Mix until fully combined and pour into prepared tin.
Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, the top should be golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle will come up clean.
Mix the other half of the citrus juice with icing sugar, the mixture should be slightly opaque but still very runny. If you want the icing to infuse to the center of the cake, poke your loaf all over with a tooth pick or skewer and slowly pour icing over the top of the loaf while still in the pan. If you want the icing just to coat the cake, just slowly pour the icing over the loaf as soon as it comes out of the oven. Decorate with ground nuts as in the photo, rose petals or some sprinkles immediately after icing.
Let cool in the pan for 1 hour.
Remove from pan and let cool on a rack until cool to the touch.
This cake will last up to 1 week if kept stored in the fridge. Eat slices with your hands standing over the kitchen counter or serve on a plate with a dollop of yogurt (non-dairy or dairy) or creme fraiche if you’re feeling particularly indulgent. If I have the time, I also like to pair it with caramelised oranges.
Reading list:
Sugar in English and Spanish Caribbean Poetry, Keith Ellis
Sidney Mintz – his website in general!
Alicia Kennedy On Ingredients
Interview with Nia Raquelle Smith, which discusses cake in the context of ingredients, place and heritage!
Also Alicia Kennedy On Recipes - where she looks at why recipes should help us toward intuitive cooking. Chloe’s drizzle loaf recipe is a good example of a base recipe with lots of potential for flavour alterations in the sponge and in the icing. Feel free to ask Chloe your cake questions, she’s always happy to talk flavour experiments! Right now she’s thinking of making that cake with toasted ground hazelnuts and a chocolate glaze.