Years ago, I took an Indian cooking class taught by a woman who had grown up in India. She wasn't a chef — just someone who had inherited a lifetime of flavors from her mother and grandmother, carried across an ocean in her memory.
She introduced us to the practice of toasting and frying spices before incorporating them into a dish, a technique that unlocks something almost alchemical: richer aromas, deeper flavor, a complexity you simply can't get from spices added cold. It was in her kitchen that I first understood chickpea flour — how, when fried with onions, it transforms into something earthy, nutty, and satisfying in a way that's hard to describe until you've tasted it. Simple pakoras. Nothing fancy. Completely unforgettable.
But what stayed with me most wasn't a technique or a recipe. It was something she said about turmeric. In India, she explained, turmeric was never really thought of as a spice — not in the way we think of spices in the West. It was a wellness ingredient, something used historically alongside other powerful flavors to support the digestive system. A functional food, long before that phrase existed.