Green Cardamom - Whole Pods

Cardamom is the third most expensive spice in the world by weight, after saffron and vanilla, and the reason sits entirely in the harvest. Elettaria cardamomum is a tall perennial of the ginger family whose pods ripen a few at a time along a stem near the ground, so a field has to be picked over and over across a season, by hand, pod by pod, each one taken at the moment it is full but still green and still closed. None of it has been mechanised. You are paying for labour, and the price ladder reflects that honestly rather than pretending it belongs beside cumin.

This is not an Egyptian crop either. Cardamom is native to the Western Ghats of southern India, and today the largest producer is Guatemala with India second; ours is imported. What is Egyptian is the appetite. Egypt and the Gulf states are among the largest cardamom buyers on earth, and almost all of it goes into coffee.

Buy pods, not loose seeds. The pod is not packaging somebody forgot to remove - it is the packaging. Cardamom's aroma lives in a volatile oil inside the small black seeds, and an intact green husk seals it in almost perfectly. Loose seeds, and far worse ground cardamom, have been exposed since the day they were shelled and lose their character within weeks. A pod that is still properly green, still plump and still closed is a sealed container with a shelf life of a year or more.

Green is the grade to buy. Bleached or white cardamom has been treated to lighten the husk for appearance and comes out noticeably flatter. Black cardamom is not a variant at all but a different genus, Amomum, dried over fire - big, wrinkled, smoky and completely wrong for coffee or for anything asking for green cardamom. Look for even colour, no split husks and no rattle: a rattling pod has dried out and its seeds have shrunk.

The smell is two things at once. Eucalyptol, the compound that gives eucalyptus its coolness, supplies the camphorous, almost menthol lift; terpinyl acetate supplies the sweet, fruity, faintly floral body underneath. That combination is why cardamom reads as cooling and sweet together, and why it works equally well in a coffee pot and in a custard.

The Egyptian use above all others is qahwa bil hal, coffee with cardamom. Crack two or three pods, bruise them, and put them in the kanaka with the finely ground coffee and the cold water before it goes near the heat, so the whole thing comes up to the boil together. Sugar is decided at the start rather than at the table: saada is unsweetened, mazbout is medium, ziyada is sweet. Do not use ground cardamom for this - it clouds the cup and it is not the same drink.

Beyond the coffee pot, whole pods go into rice and pilaf and are eaten around, into stewed meat, and into the poaching syrup for figs and dates. Bruised pods go into black tea. The seeds, ground at the moment of use, go into cakes, custards, rice pudding, Egyptian sweets and baharat. A pod dropped into a pot of tea with a little mint is excellent on a cold evening.

In Egypt cardamom coffee is traditionally offered to a guest and traditionally taken after a heavy meal, which is offered here as a description of the custom rather than as a health claim, and it is not medical advice.