Dagad phool

• dagad phoolदगड फूल

  Marathi

• pathar phoolपत्थर फूल

  Hindi

• kalpasi

  Tamil

• kallu hoovu

  Kannada

• rathi puvvu

  Telugu

Earthy, smoky and faintly bitter, with a savoury depth that is the reason it is used. Like several things in this catalogue it contributes body rather than a flavour anyone can name in a finished dish, and it is noticed mainly when it is absent from a masala that should contain it.

Faint and earthy in the packet — musty, mineral, like damp stone or a forest floor — and quite different once it meets hot fat, where it opens into something smoky and distinctly savoury.

Grey-green above and black-brown beneath, in flat papery ruffled pieces a few centimetres across.

Dry, light and papery, almost weightless. A tablespoon of it weighs very little, which makes volume measurements for this ingredient unusually unreliable.

Rinse it, then fry it. Dagad phool contributes almost nothing until it meets hot oil or ghee, where it swells and releases a smoky savoury aroma, so a recipe that stirs it into a liquid has wasted it — it goes into the fat with the whole spices at the very beginning. Use a small piece: the material is extremely light, a spoonful is a great deal of it, and a heavy hand gives a dish a distinctly mineral bitterness. And wash it first, because it comes off a rock.

A blend and base spice in Maharashtrian, Chettinad, Hyderabadi and Deccani cooking: in goda masala, kala masala, Chettinad masalas and biryani mixtures, and fried in oil at the start of meat and chicken dishes. It contributes an earthy smoky depth rather than an identifiable flavour, and it is used in small quantity.

• frying — The essential step. Dagad phool contributes almost nothing until it hits hot oil or ghee, where it swells slightly and releases a smoky savoury aroma. A recipe that adds it to a liquid without frying it first has wasted it.
• toasting — Dry-roasted with the other whole spices before grinding into a masala, which is how it enters goda masala and Chettinad blends.
• grinding — Ground into blends. It mills easily because it is dry and papery.
• boiling — Once bloomed, it holds through a long braise, which is where most of it goes.

Dagad phool gives very little away by smell in the packet, so the useful test is condition rather than aroma: dry, light, papery and free of a musty smell. If it feels at all soft or damp, or smells of mould rather than of stone, discard it.

• Softness or dampness
• A musty mould smell as distinct from the normal earthy one
• Visible mould

• Moisture uptake and, in humid storage, mould
• Slow loss of what aroma there is

Whole, always, and for an unusual reason: this is an ingredient that has to be bloomed in fat before it does anything, and blooming a whole piece is the technique. Ground dagad phool exists inside made-up masalas and is not sold separately in any quantity. The practical difficulty with buying it is not form but weight — the material is so light that a recipe specifying a tablespoon and a shop selling it by the gram are describing very different amounts.

• Clean pieces with little visible bark, moss or grit.
• Dry, light and papery rather than soft or damp.
• Large intact fragments rather than crumbs.
• Bought from a South Asian spice merchant, where it is inexpensive and where the name will be regional rather than English.

Parmeliaceae

A foliose lichen forming flat, ruffled, grey-green to brown-black rosettes on rock and tree bark, mostly gathered in the Himalayas and the hills of central and southern India. It is dry, light and papery, and looks more like a scrap of torn leather than like anything sold as a spice.

The Himalayas and the hill forests of central and southern India, where the lichens are gathered from rock faces and tree bark.

• India — origin. Gathering is concentrated in the Himalayan states and in the Western Ghats and central Indian hills.
• Nepal — notable producer

Collected by hand from rock and bark, cleaned of grit and debris, and dried. Lichen growth is slow enough that heavy collection is a genuine sustainability question, and SpiceHQ holds no source assessing the pressure on wild populations.

1. Gathering — The lichen thallus lifted by hand from rock faces and tree bark.
2. Cleaning — Grit, moss and bark fragments separated out.Why: A gathered forest product arrives with a great deal that is not the ingredient, and the cleaning is most of the processing.
3. Drying — Air-dried, though the material arrives close to dry already.

Grit, bark and other lichens are the routine contaminants, and they are a consequence of hand-gathering rather than of deliberate adulteration. Washing before use is standard practice for this reason.

Humid hill forest with clean air. Lichens are famously sensitive to air pollution and grow only where it is low, which is a real constraint on where this can be gathered.

A small regional trade in a wild-gathered product, supplied through South Asian spice merchants and rarely stocked elsewhere.

Lichens including this one have a recorded place in Ayurvedic and Unani materia medica. Recorded as tradition; SpiceHQ holds no clinical source and makes no health claim.