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They say you always remember your first.

Mine was cinnamon.

The setting is a suburban house, early 1970s, northern New Jersey; Paul McCartney’s “Let ’Em In” is on the radio. My brothers and I are mixing copious amounts of cinnamon with sugar and dusting it from on high over toasted and buttered Wonder Bread. The spicy sweet aroma to our young noses is the olfactory equivalent of a warm, soft blanket. Every morning we wrap ourselves in its scent.

Cinnamon was my gateway spice; it opened the door, ever so hesitantly, to a world of unique and complex flavors.

Next came caraway. Revealed to me as those little half-moon specks sullying my rye bread, caraway created a cultural problem for me as a child. Growing up in a Jewish household, it was sacrilege to eschew rye bread. A picky eater then, I was curious enough about food to keep nibbling at those pungent little crescents, recreating my nose-wrinkling response. Given a choice, I ate my rye seedless, but years later I realized that rye bread isn’t rye bread without caraway. I imagine my grandmother saying, “Seedless rye, feh! It should be in the aisle with blueberry bagels!”

A decade later, college carried the earthy scent of cumin, a spice that almost smells brown, into my dorm room. Cumin’s pungency was a backdrop to many experiments in a humble shared kitchen. Recipes for curries and Middle Eastern spice blends came from the cookbook Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant. Half of the food made there was largely inedible (including an enormous spice-stuffed zucchini that was nicknamed the Zu-canoe), but I learned—through food—about all of those faraway places that harbored the spices of my childhood: Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt and Morocco.

Coriander accompanied me into adulthood—first as a seed ground with other aromatics into chili powder or toasted with cardamom and mustard for Indian curries, and then as an herb (also known as cilantro) used in all manner of salsas, sandwiches and dips. Finally, in a flavoring triple crown, I learned to use coriander roots for Thai curries.

My most recent spice obsession is culinary sumac—not to be confused with its poisonous relative—the dried, crushed berry of a shrub that grows throughout the Mediterranean. Sumac’s deep burgundy color and its tart, earthy rich flavor swept into my life in the most random of ways. Standing in the back of a plane on my way to Thailand, reading old issues of cooking magazines, I came across a recipe for fattoush, a salad of Lebanese origins garnished with a sprinkling of sumac. Back home I made the salad, and then any other recipe I could find that called for sumac. My ultimate favorite manifestation is the Middle Eastern seasoning blend zatar, a heady mixture of toasted sesame seeds, sumac, thyme, olive oil and salt. Spread it liberally over warm pita and drizzle with a yogurt sauce flavored with herbs and cumin.

Cooking teacher and private chef Shannon Herman—whom I met at Seattle Culinary Academy, sitting at a small table beneath rows and rows of spices—shares my intense love for these spices. Like me, she prefers to buy spices whole, as they retain much more flavor longer if you grind them yourself when needed. “Mostly I buy my spices in bulk,” Shannon told me. “I shop at PCC or Big John’s PFI because their spice variety and freshness, I have found, is much better than [at] the big super-market chains.”

There is something about scooping out spices from bins and smelling them as you put them in little bags that makes preparing food a much more sensual experience. “I love to base a delicious dinner on simple local seasonal foods layered with fragrant spices, herbs, a splash of good olive oil and a squeeze of fresh lemon,” Shannon says. Her favorite spices are cumin, coriander, saffron, black pepper, star anise and ginger.

As for me, I like my dinner guests to close their eyes and guess the spices I’m using as I cook. When I make B’Stilla, I love to watch them inhale the glorious aroma of my very first spice and hear them exclaim, with the childlike enthusiasm I remember, “Cinnamon!”

Where to Buy Spices
In addition to Shannon Herman’s favorite spice destinations, listed here, you shouldn’t miss World Spice in the Pike Place Market. It is the place that always introduces me to unfamiliar spices and blends.

• Big John’s PFI (Pacific Food Importers Inc.), 1001 Sixth Ave. S., Level B; (206) 682-2022

• PCC, various locations

• World Spice, 1509 Western Ave.; (206) 682-7274

• The Souk, 1916 Pike Pl.; (206) 441-1666

• EvZE World Gourmet, 3213 Eastlake Ave. E.; (206) 709-7566
 
Spice Library
A great way to learn about spices is to smell, taste and even touch them. The next best thing? Consult the experts by sampling cookbooks for cuisines that rely heavily on spices. 

“I own hundreds of books from cuisines from all around the world, but it was in college that I discovered the delights of Paula Wolfert,” chef and cooking instructor Shannon Herman says. “She wove adventurous tales of riding camels in Morocco and the beautiful colors and scents of the souks. From tagines to couscous, she enticed me to explore, taste and cook her wonderful recipes.”

Here are three titles to add to your cookbook library:

The New Book of Middle Eastern Food  (Knopf, $35) by Claudia Roden

The Contemporary Encyclopedia of Herbs and Spices: Seasonings for the Global Kitchen  (Wiley, $40) by Tony Hill

Mediterranean Cooking, Revised Edition  (Ecco, $20) by Paula Wolfert

Becky Selengut is a Seattle-based private chef and cooking instructor. She is the founder of SeasonalCornucopia.com, an educational Web site that celebrates the foods of the Pacific Northwest.