Mastic Fantastic

Can I interest you in some hardened tree sap?

by Trey Popp

Trey Popp SAP ON TAP: Mastic, an odd, expensive ingredient produced almost exclusively on the Greek island of Chios, is commonly used in desserts, but it can be worked into savory preparations, too.

[ unlikely ingredients ]

A secret ingredient recently joined my pantry. If all you knew about it were the basic facts concerning its historical uses, you would probably not want to come over for dinner.

Over the centuries it has been a filling for dental cavities, a stabilizer in painting varnishes, an active ingredient in insecticides and a component of the holy anointing oil used by Orthodox priests.

Its natural history is no more appetizing. It is a sap bled from the branches of an evergreen shrub, the way a close genealogical relative is tapped to produce turpentine. Drops fall to the ground and harden into globules of resin that look like a batch of cut-rate crystal meth.

I bought some at Bitar's, at 10th and Federal, where it's kept out of view under the cash register counter.

"Do you sell mastic?" I inquired, and after a bit of searching, a mound of faintly yellow, not quite translucent pebbles landed on the digital scale. Three dollars' worth would have made a tablespoon look like a soup ladle. A pound of the stuff would have run $240. Which probably explained why the store had only an ounce or two on hand.

All I'd wanted was a scant quarter-teaspoon to make some Lebanese milk pudding. Now that I was in possession of a (modest) surplus, I felt compelled to find some other things to do with it.

Mastic has a culinary history to round out its bizarre curriculum vitae. Produced almost exclusively on the Greek island of Chios, it pops up most frequently in eastern Mediterranean cuisines. It once was used as chewing gum — mastic comes from a Greek verb meaning "to gnash the teeth," and is related to the English "masticate" — but it's a tad pricey for that now. These days it's primarily used as a flavoring for desserts.

I didn't want to stop at sweets, but they seemed a good place to start. First I made the milk pudding that had spurred the purchase to begin with, from a recipe by Lebanon native Anissa Helou in her book Mediterranean Street Food (William Morrow). Pulverized to a powder in a mortar and pestle (along with some sugar to provide extra grit), the mastic imparted a woodsy aroma and slightly medicinal flavor that melded with an admixture of orange-blossom water to produce an exotic and very refreshing ramekin of chilled dairy.

It was an ideal flavor for a hot day, and the days were only getting hotter. I needed to find a way to incorporate this ingredient into other stages of dinner.

In her out-of-print Café Morocco (McGraw-Hill), available from the Free Library, Helou described a strange soup marrying mastic, mint and caraway seeds in a watery broth thickened just barely with a few tablespoons of flour. It took about 20 minutes to make, only two of which involved active attention. I ground the mastic with salt this time — but alas, not enough to prevent it from gumming up the surface of my mortar.

Served hot, as is traditional, the soup tasted like a flu remedy, or a punishment designed by a passive-aggressive mother who warned you not to go outside without a jacket. The mastic impregnated the soup steam with a chemical intensity there was no hiding from. It was a little like drinking a broth flavored with Vicks VapoRub.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

Yet a pleasant surprise lurked in that failure. The next day, cold from the fridge, the soup was wonderful, in an offbeat sort of way. With no steam to amplify its chemical aspect, the mastic slipped into the background, functioning more like a throat-soothing bottom note that echoed the newly prominent mint. There was that element of refreshment again.

Subsequent research suggested that Moroccans aren't the only ones to hit on this combination. A note on Wikipedia claims that Bulgarians mix masticha, a mastic-flavored liquor, with a sweet mint liqueur to make a cocktail called a Cloud. In On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee notes that mint prominently features pinene and myrcene, the same pair of phenols that loom large in mastic's flavor profile.

Mastic is also a component in some varieties of ouzo, and since ouzo is occasionally called for in Greek preparations of shrimp cooked in tomato sauce, it was time to adulterate one of my favorite recipes from the late Gourmet magazine. This particular one doesn't feature ouzo, but no matter. I added about an eighth of a teaspoon of mastic to a 28-ounce can of crushed San Marzano tomatoes that, spiked with cinnamon and allspice, served as the baking sauce for a dozen large wild-caught shrimp.

That guess turned out to be perfect. Mastic has a strong flavor, but so did the spiced tomato sauce and feta cheese that topped it. Again it slid into the background, generating an olfactory undertow that dragged my sense-memories eastward. Perhaps I was carried away by the ingredient's hyperspecific terroir, but it felt like eating the same dish I'd made before, only on a sun-scorched slope perfumed by pine needles rustling in an offshore breeze.

For a final experiment, I improvised a mastic ice cream in which the ingredient could receive undivided attention. I used a mild honey to sweeten it and let the resin do the rest. And did it ever. Aside from a long-ago scoop of durian ice cream, I've never encountered such an aromatic specimen. It was all milk and sweetness in the spoon, but up from the bowl came a bewitching scent like caramel burnt over a wood fire.

It's not surprising that mastic has been pressed into so many wildly divergent uses. (Tooth whitener, snakebite remedy, surgical bandage adhesive: The list goes on.) On an island with limited natural resources, it pays to be inventive with the unique asset.

The same goes for a few pebbles' worth in your pantry.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)