I cook a lot of Indian food, so use a lot of spices. I grind most of them – cardamom, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cloves . . . I have a coffee grinder with three cups, one of which I use to grind spices. It works great. A few years ago someone gave me a bottle of whole nutmegs. I don’t bake much, so don’t use a lot of nutmeg, but I made several care packages for friends/relatives this week who have had surgery recently, so made a bunch of quickbreads and cookies. I ran out of nutmeg, so grated about half a meg by hand, which yielded maybe two tablespoons. 15 minutes with arthritic hands to yield half as much as I get from 30 seconds pushing a button grinding cardamom seeds.
Any suggestions? I can’t face putting a whole meg into my poor coffee grinder, and I doubt if I hit one hard enough with a kitchen mallet that I’d ever find it without sweeping the floor. Maybe chop it a few times with a cleaver in a space that will catch all the shards?
First thing that came to mind was a rotary grater. I don’t know if any, all or none of them are built to take on nutmegs, but here’s an OXO (always a good choice especially for ergonomics):
Thus is what I have always known as the standard nutmeg grater:
The nut is kept in the compartment at the top, you grate the amount you want when needed. But, in fairness, you probably wouldn’t do large(r) amounts on them.
I love nutmeg too. About a year ago, I bought a container containing about a cupful in a Middle East store. I didn’t know what to do with it but thought I’d put it in something.
I put it in some beans that I was eating for several days for my dinner. I forget all the symptoms but one I remember is my mouth was very dry but I know I felt weird. Didn’t suspect nutmeg . There were a few other symptoms. Not sure if I finished the beans over probably four days but at some stage tried to think of anything different I had eaten. I just did a search and, it’s not good over a certain amount. I was surprised. So don’t put too much in and let people know
Nutmeg is a known psychotropic, but it has a fairly high toxicity. It can lead to organ failure and death in larger doses.
Malcolm X mentions it as a substitute for marijuana in prisons, but does not mention its toxicity. Like Belladona, it can be hallucinogenic, but also highly toxic. It can easily give a ‘bad’ trip as opposed to benign high.
The Turks use it sparingly in their coffee, but in much smaller portions than, say, cardamom. (Now I know why Turkish Coffee gave me such a jolt when I was younger and overindulged!).
On a related note, I remember hearing a guy who had been in Rikers Island,and he was talking about life inside. Apparently an appalling place. He said they were punished for various reasons. One of them was eating an apple, seeds and all. Seems there is a small amount of arsenic I think in the seeds and I guess they thought people were trying to do themselves in
If you’ll forgive the pedantry, it’s cyanide, not arsenic. Not only apples but drupes (stone fruits like cherries, plums, apricots, peaches, almonds, etc.) also have varying amounts of it in their seeds. It accounts for the tasty almond-like flavor of apple seeds. It’s said that a cupful of apple seeds can kill an adult human. The seeds of one apple? Probably never.
Just throwing my one and a quarter new pence in here …
I used to have a rotary nutmeg grinder. We investigated and bought what we thought would be the best. It wasn’t all that cheap, from memory. I found it hard to use and awkward, and it lasted abut a year before it broke irredeemably. I went back to using a microplane grater. Much better, and, if you can put up with the occasional finger part in your food, quite easy. My grater has a handle, so you’re far less likely to grate your finger - actually, it ought to be impossible, but somehow I manage it …
