Ingredients · Spice
Sumac
Rhus coriaria · Anacardiaceae (cashew family)
What it’s like, and how to use it
How to use it
Over fattoush, hummus and grilled meat. In za'atar with thyme and sesame. Rubbed on chicken or lamb before roasting. Sprinkled over sliced onions beside a kebab, the Turkish way. Over eggs, yogurt, roasted vegetables, fish. Use it where you want sourness and not moisture.
With food
Onion. Chicken and lamb. Yogurt and labneh. Chickpeas. Cucumber and tomato. Olive oil and flatbread. Eggs. Pine nuts.
With spices
Thyme and sesame — za'atar. Allspice and saffron, in musakhan. Black pepper. Cumin. Coriander seed. Mint.
With tea
Not a tea ingredient, though staghorn sumac cones are steeped on their own as a tart North American drink.
Its story
Where it comes from
Rhus coriaria is native to southern Europe and western Asia — the eastern Mediterranean, Crimea, the Caucasus and northern Iran — and naturalised around the Mediterranean; it is also called Sicilian sumac and tanner's sumach. Turkey is the most common trade origin but our lot is unconfirmed. Its North American cousin, staghorn sumac, grows wild across southeastern Canada, and its red cones are steeped into a tart sumac-ade.
What happened
The name is a colour: through Old French and Medieval Latin from Arabic summāq, from Syriac summāqa, meaning red. Romans used sumac for sourness before lemons reached Europe. The oldest surviving Arabic cookbook — the tenth-century Kitab al-Tabikh, compiled by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq from the recipes of the Abbasid courts of Baghdad — has an entire section of sumac stews, summaqiyya, and one variation, haruniyya, carries the name of Harun al-Rashid, the caliph of the Thousand and One Nights. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century sumac was used widely in wealthy European kitchens too. In Palestine it makes musakhan, often considered the national dish, traditionally cooked in the olive-harvest season; in April 2010 forty cooks at Arura made one four metres across and weighing 1,350 kg, which went into Guinness World Records.
On the shelf with it
Sold on its own, and in these blends.
