Eggplant with Minty Tomato Sauce and Yogurt

The first year I lived in Berlin, my roommate and I cooked a lot. That year I learned to roast a chicken, not be scared of baking things I’d never heard of, and to put a lot of salt into pasta water. This dish – eggplant with minty tomato sauce and yogurt – was one of our staples, something we’d often make after coming home from a long day or for friends on the weekend. I’m not sure why, but I stopped making it for a number of years. When I decided to cook it this summer, I had no idea where I had gotten the recipe from. A quick google search showed me it is one of Madhur Jaffrey’s recipes, which explains why it’s so good. I’ve always loved eggplant, and the combination of spice and cumin cut by the creamy yogurt is a great late summer dish.

There is a lot to say about eggplants, olive oil, and tomatoes, but today’s post focuses on spices, specifically cumin. Cumin is the second most popular spice in the world, just behind pepper. Historians believe that it was first grown in Egypt, along the Nile, where it was used in the mummification process. The Greeks and Romans also used cumin, although they associated the spice with greed. Cumin didn’t remain in the Mediterranean, but spread around the world. It traveled east to Persia and then to India, as well as west to Spain and from there to North and South America. This spread of cumin explains why it is found in so many different food cultures: Indian, Iranian, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Mexican, Cuban, and many more.

Although there is a lot of widely available information about the history of spices, it’s much more difficult to learn about the modern supply chain of spices. While it’s difficult to trace individual supply chains, we have a general sense of how spices are sourced. India is the world’s largest producer of spices, as well as the largest consumer and exporter of spices. In just the first quarter of 2016, India exported $626.8 million worth of spices, equal to 215,215 tonnes (474,467,858 pounds). According to one source, India, specifically the Indian state of Gujurat, produces about three quarters of the world’s cumin.

Most spices are grown in countries, like India, that have warm climates and are primarily cultivated by smallholder farmers. These farmers often struggle to make ends meet and may be food-insecure. Farmers generally are subject to the whims of the market and have to accept whatever price they are offered for their spices – they generally don’t have the capacity to store spices and wait for better prices. Spices are also often grown as monocultures, meaning on farms that grow only one crop, which can degrade the land and lead to a loss of biodiversity. 

Spice supply chains are long and opaque. According to one source, spices pass through up to six middlemen before they are even exported. Because of the lack of transparency built into this type of supply chain (similar to supply chains for cocoa and coffee), these opaque supply chains are likely to be tainted by human rights abuses. If the company selling the spices can’t trace their supply chains and tell you who is growing the spices and how they are being bought and sold, it’s possible that abuses of some kind are occurring. After all, a jar of cumin is usually sourced from hundreds of farms, with the cumin from each farm co-mingling with cumin from other farms. It’s possible, and in some locations likely, that on at least some of the farms that produce the spice that goes into the jar you buy at the store, either forced or child labor is used to produce the spice or there is environmental harm of some kind. (While forced and child labor has not been reported in Indian cumin production, that doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t happen. However, we know that cumin from Turkey is produced in part with child labor.)

Long supply chains also create the potential for spices to be tampered with. This happened a few years ago, when peanuts were found to have been substituted for cumin in the US. Around the same time, almonds were found to have been substituted for paprika and cumin in both the UK and Scandinavia. It appears that peanut and almond shells, which are quite cheap, had been ground up and added to the spices to increase the quantity at low costs. Obviously, this presented real health concerns, especially for anyone with allergies. But it also demonstrates that, as in many industries, the quality of a good that passes through so many parties is often lower than when sourced directly from farmers.

Despite the lack of information on how spices are sourced, there actually is a simple way to buy more ethically sourced spices. (You also get to support small businesses instead of multinational companies like Olam and Unilever, so it’s a win-win.) There are smaller spice companies, like Rumi Spice, that use “direct trade.” This means that the company shortens the supply chain by buying directly from the farmers. The company therefore knows (or should know) what is happening on the farms from which they are sourcing. They also usually pay the farmers a higher wage, since there are no middlemen taking a cut at each stage. Not only is your money going more directly to the farmers, but the quality of the spices is also generally higher.

Much of the information on the history of cumin comes from the book The Carrot Purple and other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat by Joel S. Denker.

Eggplant with Minty Tomato Sauce and Yogurt

Course: Uncategorized

Servings

4

servings

Total time

40

minutes

Adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe for Eggplant with Minty Tomato Sauce and Yogurt.

Ingredients

• 1 ½ pounds of eggplant, any variety (3-4 Japanese eggplants work well)

• 3 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped

• 3 garlic cloves, minced

• 1 (28-ounce can) of plum tomatoes can

• 1 teaspoon sea salt

• 1 teaspoon ground cumin

• ½ teaspoon ground coriander

• ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves, plus more for garnishing

• ½-1 cup plain Greek yogurt (amount varies depending on how much you like yogurt)

Directions

• Cut eggplants into pieces. (For Japanese eggplants, cut them into quarters. For larger eggplants, cut them into 1-inch thick rounds.) Liberally dab olive oil on all sides of the eggplant pieces so that they won’t stick to the baking dish. Liberally salt the eggplants on both sides, and then lay them in glass or ceramic baking dishes. Don’t squish them together – they need some space so that they cook evenly, so use a second dish if necessary. Bake at 400˚ F (200˚ C) for about 20 minutes, then flip them over and bake for another 20 minutes. They should be lightly browned on the interior side and soft all the way through. (The cooking time will depend on the type of eggplant and the size of the pieces.)
• In the meantime, make the tomato sauce. Heat olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook over medium heat about 10 minutes, until they are beginning to brown. Add the garlic, salt, cumin, coriander, and cayenne pepper. Stir and cook for about 1 minute.
• Add the tomatoes. Mix and crush the tomatoes until they form a sauce. Simmer for about 20 minutes to give the flavors time to come together. When almost ready to serve, add 3 tablespoons of mint and cook for another 2 minutes.
• Serve plain or with rice. Ladle tomato sauce onto eggplants, add a dollop of Greek yogurt and sprinkle with fresh mint.