Why you should toast your cumin

Cumin is probably the most-used whole spice in the Indian kitchen, and most of the time it goes straight into hot oil for a tadka. But there is a second technique worth learning: dry-roasting, where the seeds meet a hot pan with no fat at all.

Set a dry pan on medium heat, add the seeds, and keep them moving. In a minute or two they will darken by a shade, release a deep nutty aroma and start to smell almost like caramel. Pull them off before they blacken — burnt cumin is acrid and there is no saving a dish it has entered.

Ground into a coarse powder, dry-roasted cumin (bhuna jeera) becomes a finishing spice in its own right. It is the magic dust over raita, chaat, buttermilk and fruit salads — that warm, smoky note you can never quite place in good street food.

Keep a small jar of it ground and ready. A pinch over almost anything savoury, at the very end, makes people ask what your secret is.