Curried Popcorn

I love used bookstores. While John scouts around for vintage mysteries I can be found in the cookbook section, pawing through entire libraries from days gone by. There is something special about a used bookstore found while traveling. In Cooperstown, Kat and I loaded up on vintage community cookbooks and recipe folios from a treasure trove we found at Willis Monie. Last summer in the Cosmopolitan Book Shop on Melrose Avenue, I was in transports to find, as befit the West Coast locale, a stack of treasures from Sunset: cookbooks, wine guides, even decorating. Aside from the mighty Strand, we have a few good used bookstores left in New York City. One such is Bonnie Slotnick, where I regularly feed my addiction to mid-century hostessing guides.

The sociology of these treasures merits its own forthcoming column, but for October at Urban Home, they offer an interesting take on Halloweens gone by. The "Holiday House" section of The Complete How-to of Home Entertaining (Cape Magazine, 1962) devotes one page to this holiday, with recipes for Shrimp Witches (eggs shirred with shrimp, spinach and Parmesan) and a Witching Hour Cake that references the holiday's roots as a New Year's celebration. The Halloween section in the Better Homes and Gardens Holiday Cook Book (Meredith, 1959) is more thorough; readers today, used to an abundance of specialized lifestyle publications, would consider it a serious effort. It hits all the high notes for All Hallows, from a guide to glamming up your pumpkin's outside to cooking its insides, recipes for a variety of candies (just imagine trying to give out homemade Halloween candy now), and cornerstone fall treats like caramel apples. And, unique among a considerable curriculum library, this one remembers to mention popcorn, suggesting shaping popcorn balls into sinister owls or scaredy cats.

According to the Popcorn Board (yes, Virginia, it exists), October is National Popcorn Popping Month. That's appropriate, for popcorn has long been associated with autumn. Autumn activities arise from the celebration of the harvest, and popcorn has been an important crop in the Americas since time immemorial -- Cortes wrote about encountering it during the conquest of Mexico, but it had been important to the Aztecs for centuries prior. Popcorn balls have been a signature treat of Halloween since the turn of the twentieth century. In gentler times they were especially popular when given out during trick or treating, and making them had a place at the firehouse Halloween party right next to the apple bob. Popcorn was also a common treat in country inns, where a weary traveler would often find a cast-iron popper keeping warm in the fire to sate munchy appetites as the ale flowed.

Popcorn is de rigueur for the movies, and, at least in our urban home, October is horror movie month. TCM has been creeping us through some of the gems in the Hammer film library, but there are plenty of scary classics on the DVD shelves we organized last Labor Day. Sometime during the evening, our attention turns (if not far) from the candy bowl to the popcorn tub. I have developed this recipe for curried popcorn, in which a simple, subtle heat bursts from the bowl in tones of autumn gold. Set it on the buffet for your Halloween house party, or settle with it the next time you cozy up for a night of fright.

Curried Popcorn
Curry is a household-proprietary blend of spices that usually contains turmeric, coriander, cumin, fenugreek and chiles. For popcorn, I use commercial Madras curry powder -- here is a good brand. Do not balk at mixing the butter with the curry -- mixing butter and spices is common in Indian cooking. Popcorns agrees with cast iron, but I make popcorn in a caldero, a dutch oven with a tight lid from Latin American cooking, whose shape and construction material are ideal for the quick heat and ease of handling that makes popping corn nearly foolproof.

1/2 cup popcorn kernels
2 tablespoons canola oil
1-1/2 tablespoons Madras curry powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter
Kosher salt

1. Place a large caldero or a cast iron skillet with a lid on the stove top. Turn burner to high.
2. Place the curry and cinnamon in the pan; swirl to combine. Toast on high until the spices just begin to give off their fragrance, about 30 seconds.
3. Add the oil to the toasted spices. Swirl to coat the bottom of the pan.
4. Pour the popcorn into the flavored oil. Swirl to coat the kernels and distribute them evenly across the bottom of the pan.
5. Cover the pan. Listen for the corn to start popping. Cook the popcorn on high, occasionally shaking the pan but not peeking, until the popping sounds slow to every few seconds.
6. While the popcorn is cooking, melt the butter in a small saucepan.
7. Once the popcorn has finished cooking as described in step 5, remove the lid. Be careful of escaping steam.
8. Drizzle the melted butter over the flavored popcorn. Use a wooden spoon or silicon spatula to gently stir the butter into the popcorn. Use your free hand to sprinkle the popcorn with kosher salt as you stir.
9. Place the curried popcorn in a large bowl. Serve immediately.