Event Announcement: Cooking with Seeds – Poppy

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Poppy: The Gastronomic King

Poppy is one of the most widely used spices or rather seeds in any cuisine. The seeds though tiny have a huge influence in art of the gastronomy. As the wiki page on poppy rightly claims poppy had been essentially grown for medicinal purposes as a sedative, but more for its famous counterpart, the cuisine delights. 

Poppy in Cuisine

Uses of poppy seeds find its preliminary element as a classic add-on to buttered egg noodles, fruit salad dressings and fragrant yeast breads. Poppy seeds lend a nutty flavor and texture to cookies, cakes, breads, strudels, pastry crusts and pancake, including even waffle batters. Corrie’s recipe makes use of ingredients such as poppy to give the dish a tinge of flavour & avoid blandness in the dish. The seeds of the poppy plant are used extensively in and on umpteen food delights such as bagels, bialys, muffins or cakes and not to forget the famous alu posto (patato in poppy paste). The seeds can be crushed to manufacture poppy seed oil, which can vastly be employed in cooking. The primary flavor compound for poppy is 2-pentylfuran.

Poppy  – The healthy seed

Poppy seeds add a distinct flavor and taste to food. But that is not the only reason why they are consumed; poppy seeds provide quite a number of health benefits too. Poppy seeds are considered to be an excellent source of vital minerals like magnesium, zinc, calcium, etc. that are needed for the smooth functioning of all human organs. As they provide the body with a good source of carbohydrates, they add loads of energy in the body. The fatty acids aid in digestion as well as supplying other important acids required to break down food in the stomach. Poppy seeds contain linoleic acid and oleic acid. Linoleic acid protects the heart from many heart diseases and conditions, while oleic acid is known to help in prevention of breast cancer. Calories in poppy seeds is also comparatively less than other spices and herbs.

As it does not contain a lot of alkaloids, one of the poppy seeds nutrition facts is that it is used to treat all kinds of nervous disorders. It is given in minimum quantities to treat insomnia. It also helps to alleviate asthma and whooping cough symptoms. It is also used to treat diarrhea and other stomach related conditions. Its use in medicinal products and medicines is highly regulated though. Oil extracted from poppy seeds is also used to make drugs and medicines.

Poppy – The Event

With all these benefits in mind and also for its wonderful taste, when I thought of being a part of Priya’s Cooking with Seeds series, I instantly chose poppy to be the theme for this month. All through this month we’ll be hosting the Cooking with Seeds event, the brain child of Priyasuresh of Priya’s Easy and Tasty Recipes.

Send in your entries to bengalicuisine [at] gmail [dot] com with the following details and “Cooking with Seeds – Poppy” in the subject line:

• Name:
• Prepared dish:
• URL of the recipe:
• Name of website/blog:
• URL of your site:
• Image of the prepared recipe:

Entries will be accepted throughout this month till 31st October, 2010 12 midnight IST.

The entries can be recently posted during this month or can also be archived posts, but please update your posts with a link to Cook Like a Bong and Priya’s Easy and Tasty Recipes. We’ll love if you can add this logo to your posts.

Those of who don’t have a blog please send in your entries to the above email-id along with your details and the recipes. We’ll put up the recipe as a guest post in our site and include those on the round-up to be published in the first week of November.

We would love to know your suggestions and comments. Don’t forget to have a copy of our Festive recipe e-book and the October calendar.

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