In The Kitchen: June

IN THE KITCHEN is a monthly inquiry into food and cooking — tastes, plates, reflections on food and creativity, and recipes. Bring these with you into your own mornings, days, evenings, kitchens, and pair these with a journal.

On the days when the jar of cardamom is open, the camphor fresh scent of wood and citrus herb embraces not just the kitchen, but what feels like the entire apartment. Waves of spice waft out the windows, travel down streets, into scent and breathing. Add to smell the texture of wind, and cooler days’ breeze for nearly all of the last month, the gift of windows wide without humidity, and the scent transforms from intimate tablespoons to a whole environment—one of insight, and comfort.

In Chicago the last few weeks of spring were cool, almost cold, some sweater laden days; June’s weeks were absent enough heat to encourage, some days, in firing the oven. To a large metal bowl, almost weekly, I poured a small mountain of oats, covered the mound in sesame seeds, then a layer of cardamom.

Spring seems to come and stir up whatever’s left of winter, infusing rain and eagerness into days and the ground. Take the spoon and swirl the oats around. Olive oil, in its expressions of earthy fruit, meets with maple, wrapped around the seeds and grains.

June was a month of finding rhythms, learning a new kitchen, and infusing light and spice into the walls, windows, atmosphere, and wooden floors of the apartment. To ground down, the sweet infusion of oats laden in cardamom, eaten in the quiet hours of morning. Below, the granola recipe for the courageous summer bakers, or those for whom the taste of sesame and cardamom is one you crave.