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And then what we're going to do is to dice the onions,
fry them till they're translucent with a bit of ginger, salt, chilli and the turmeric.
The key with turmeric is that it needs to be cooked in heat.
Yes, it needs to be cooked in heat, otherwise it tastes bitter and the flavour doesn't come out.
This is Dr Seema Nagpur.
She's cooking up a quick lunch for herself and her mum at her home in the York Chateau of Halifax,
Northern England.
and I've been invited to taste the food.
Sima's making us a simple potato curry today, jeera aloo, a popular dish from India.
So my mum always says that my cooking, though we use the same recipe,
always tastes different because with Indians it's not measured,
it's done by a what's called an dhaza, which is a guesstimate.
So I tend to put in a bit more turmeric than she does, she tends to put in.
more of some of the other spices and the balance is always a bit different.
This is the food chain from the BBC World Service with me, Ramela Dasgupta.
Whether you're cooking an Indian chicken curry, a Sudanese camel biryani,
a Malaysian laksa or a Bangladeshi machid chul, there's one common ingredient, turmeric.
Today we're taking a look at one of the world's most ancient and best-loved spices.
In 99% of our cooking, turmeric is always there.