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.