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Under the health law, large employers that don't offer their full-time workers comprehensive, affordable health insurance face a fine. But some employers are taking it a step further and requiring workers to buy the company insurance, whether they want it or not.

Many workers may have no choice but to comply.

Some workers are upset. One disgruntled reader wrote to Kaiser Health News: "My employer is requiring me to purchase health insurance and is automatically taking the premium out of my paycheck even though I don't want to sign up for health insurance. Is this legal?"

The short answer is yes. Under the federal health law, employers with 100 or more full-time workers can enroll them in company coverage without their say as long as the plan is deemed affordable and adequate. That means the employee contribution is no more than 9.5 percent of the federal poverty guideline and the plan pays for at least 60 percent of covered medical expenses, on average.

"If you offer an employee minimum essential coverage that provides minimum value and is affordable, you need not provide an opt out," says Seth Perretta, a partner at Groom Law Group, a Washington, D.C., firm specializing in employee benefits.

If a plan doesn't meet those standards, however, employees must be given the opportunity to decline those company plans, under the health law. They can shop for coverage on the health insurance marketplaces and may qualify for premium tax credits if their income is between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

Those premium subsidies aren't available to workers whose employer offers good coverage that meets the law's standards.

Not that many employers are expected to strong arm their workers into buying health insurance. Those that do may be confused about their responsibilities under the health law, mistakenly believing that in order to avoid penalties they have to enroll their workers in coverage.

"That is just dead wrong," says Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who's an expert on the health law.

"Nothing in the Affordable Care Act directs employers to make their coverage mandatory for employees," says a Treasury Department spokesperson. The law requires large employers "to either offer coverage or pay a fee if their full-time workers access tax credits to get coverage on their own in the marketplace."

Employer penalties for not offering insurance that meets the health law's standards can run up to $3,000 per employee.

For employers, forcing coverage on their workers could be counterproductive. "Do you really want to limit employees' ability to select whether they get this coverage?" says Amy Bergner, managing director at human resources consultant PwC. "What impact does that have from talent management perspective?"

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I first encountered cumin in suburban New Jersey around 1988. Indian food was just starting to penetrate the suburbs, and a trip to the new Indian restaurant in the next town had, literally, the whiff of adventure about it.

As I took in the many new tastes and aromas from curries and kormas, one stood out: what I deemed the "the sweaty shirt spice," or cumin.

Cumin is essential not just to India cooking but to cooks everywhere from Cuba, where it features in a garlicky sauce called mojo, to the Middle East, to China, where it flavors the grilled meats of the country's Muslim minority.

Here in the U.S. you'll find cumin in an impressively diverse selection of products from chili powder and black bean soup to croutons and kale slaw, as a recent Food and Drug Administration recall of cumin products revealed. Some of our most popular restaurant chains rely on it heavily, too: Cumin is in nine of the 23 items on Chipotle's menu.

The Salt

Nutmeg Spice Has A Secret Story That Isn't So Nice

"Once it has been introduced into a new land and culture, cumin has a way of insinuating itself deeply into the local cuisine, which is why it has become one of the most commonly used spices in the world," writes Gary Nabhan, author and social science researcher at the University of Arizona Southwest Center, in his recent book, Cumin, Camels, and Caravans.

Nabhan's book is really a much broader look at the spice trade and its relationship to history and culture. But cumin earned a spot in the title "because it is so demonstrative of culinary globalization," Nabhan writes.

Cumin has also literally been popular since the dawn of written history.

In English, at least, cumin has a singular distinction – it is the only word that can be traced directly back to Sumerian, the first written language. So when we talk about cumin, we are harkening back to the Sumerian word gamun, first written in the cuneiform script more than 4,000 years ago.

Cumin's popularity in ancient Mesopotamia is also evident in the world's oldest recipe collection, the so-called Yale Culinary Tablets, which date to about 1750 BC. Written in what is now southern Iraq, the tablets attest to the Mesopotamians' taste for highly spiced food with lots of onions, garlic and kamnu, as cumin was called in Akkadian, the Semitic language the recipes were written in.

Almost a millennium later in the 9th century BC, the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II threw a huge feast to celebrate the construction of his new capital, Nimrud, in what is now northern Iraq. Boasting about it in a royal inscription erected in his new palace, Ashurnasirpal lists the massive quantities of food he served to guests from all over his empire, including lots of cumin. It was probably used as a table condiment as it still is throughout the Middle East.

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More Americans became familiar with the flavor of cumin in the 1960s as restaurants like Taco Bell gained popularity. Here, beef short ribs are seasoned with ground coriander, cumin garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper and brown sugar. Bob Rudis/Flickr hide caption

itoggle caption Bob Rudis/Flickr

More Americans became familiar with the flavor of cumin in the 1960s as restaurants like Taco Bell gained popularity. Here, beef short ribs are seasoned with ground coriander, cumin garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper and brown sugar.

Bob Rudis/Flickr

The cuisines of the classical world also made use of cumin both as a flavoring and a drug. The Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of Greek medical texts mostly dating to late 5th and early 4th centuries BC, lists cumin as one of the ingredients in a prescription said to stop a woman's uterus from moving around her abdomen and causing "hysteria." Its association with women's reproductive health is also noted by the 1st century CE Roman author Pliny the Elder in his Natural History. He writes that if a woman smells cumin during sex she is more likely to conceive.

Besides its supposed medicinal properties, the ubiquity of cumin on the Roman table can be seen in the novel Satyricon, from around the 1st century BC. In it, the pompous Trimalchio is throwing a lavish dinner party and is shocked to find that his cook has forgotten to prepare the pig. Trimalchio, in a rage, complains that the cook is not taking the situation seriously enough, saying that he is acting as if he has only forgotten to add a pinch of pepper and cumin to a dish. Cumin was so important that in a Roman cookbook attributed to Apicius, dating the late 4th or early 5th century AD, it's listed among the "pantry essentials" that every well stocked home must have.

Cumin spread throughout Europe with the Roman Empire and its culinary and (alleged) medicinal qualities continued to be valued throughout the Middle Ages. In 13th-century England, rents were often paid in cumin, and the household of King Henry III would buy it in quantities of 20 pounds at a time. By the end of the 15th century, when Europeans began looking for new trade routes to obtain even more exotic spices, cumin was being widely cultivated in the warmer parts of the continent.

After 1492, the "Columbian Exchange" brought about a massive new trade in products between Europe and the Americas that would influence eating habits in ways large and small. While foods like chilies and chocolate were being introduced to Old World kitchens, the ancient culinary traditions of the Americas were being introduced to cumin.

When Spanish settlers first planted cumin in the Americas, one of the last legs of cumin's journey began. By about 1600, cumin was being grown in what is now New Mexico; quickly it became an integral part of the regional cuisine. Anglo-American settlers first tasted the heady mix of cumin and chilies, which we now think of as central to Mexican and Southwestern food, when they began moving west in the 19th century.

These settlers and their descendants began incorporating this style of cooking into their own culinary repertoires, which helped to spread cumin's popularity. This could even be seen in the White House where Lady Bird Johnson, wife of the first president from Texas, had her own recipe for "Pedernales River Chili," which called for a teaspoon of comino seed (the Spanish word for cumin).

To the east, cumin traveled down the Persian Gulf where it was spread to India by traders from the Arabian Peninsula and from there throughout South Asia. The overland route linking Europe to Asia, usually referred to as the Silk Road, also helped to spread cumin's popularity and it was in this way that cumin reached China. In the Middle East, where cumin's use was first recorded, the spiced has remained popular in cuisines throughout the region and is often found in small bowls on tables right next to the salt.

More Americans became familiar with the flavor of cumin in the 1960s as restaurants like Taco Bell gained popularity. The second half of the 20th century also saw significant immigration from South Asia bringing dishes that had been redolent of cumin for millennia to the U.S.

Whether it's foul for breakfast in Syria, chana masala for lunch in India or mole for dinner in Mexico, cumin is always on the table somewhere in the world. When we eat it we are part of a tradition going back to the very beginning of recorded history.

Adam Maskevich is an archaeologist who has worked extensively throughout the Middle East. He has also taught classes on the history of food and cooking in antiquity and the politics of archaeology.

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food history

Iraqi troops and militia fighters are reportedly inside the city of Tikrit, the city that's been held by the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or ISIS, since last June. Officials and witnesses say the Iraqis now control part of northern Tikrit.

Tikrit is the capital of Salahuddin province, between Baghdad and ISIS-controlled Mosul. Citing state-run television, The Associated Press quotes Salahuddin police Brig. Kheyon Rasheed as saying Wednesday, "The terrorists are seizing the cars of civilians trying to leave the city and they are trying to make a getaway."

The push to retake Tikrit began nine days ago, with thousands of Iraq's military troops bolstered by Kurdish fighters and both Sunni and Shiite militia groups. Despite the apparent progress in the city's northern district of Qadisiyya, troops have been slowed by sniper fire and hidden bombs.

Reuters reports: "The army and militia fighters raised the national flag above a military hospital in the section of Qadisiyya they had retaken from the militants, security officials said."

Word of the advance comes after after the Iraqi force pushed ISIS fighters out of the town of al-Alam, on the northern outskirts of Tikrit, on Tuesday.

Tikrit

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Just because a meal is vegetarian doesn't mean it can't be "meaty." One trick to heighten the depth of flavors in plant-based dishes? Use ingredients that offer a pop of umami, say Bridget Lancaster and Jack Bishop of America's Test Kitchen, who have released the new cookbook The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook.

Umami (which means "delicious" or "yummy" in Japanese) is the name of the savory flavor in meat and fish — and it's recognized as one of the five tastes, along with sweet, salty, sour and bitter. Umami "incites our taste receptors on our tongue to kind of pick up that savory note from foods," Lancaster, the executive food editor of the Test Kitchen, tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook

A Fresh Guide to Eating Well With 700 Foolproof Recipes

by America's Test Kitchen

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And umami isn't limited to meat. Mushrooms, tomatoes and soy sauce are foods that are high in glutamates, which are the natural compounds that stimulate our umami receptors.

"As a whole, a lot of vegetarian foods, especially a while back, were kind of one-dimensional," Lancaster asserts. "They were a little bit sweet or a little bit bitter. Especially our main courses in this cookbook really satisfy a lot of the flavors on our palate."

Bishop, the editorial director of the Test Kitchen, says a favorite recipe of his in the book is the mushroom Bolognese.

It's the soy sauce, he says, that makes the flavor snap.

"You would think, 'Soy sauce in an Italian recipe?'" he says. "It doesn't read as soy sauce in the final dish. But again, it's adding more depth than if you were to just add an equivalent amount of salt. ... If you add soy sauce, you get salt and you get the glutamates."

Interview Highlights

On using tomato paste to add structure to a vegetarian dish

Jack Bishop: I think a great example is an Indian curry. So [people tend to] think if there are no chunks of tomatoes, then there are no tomatoes in it. But often we'll add, after we've browned onions and garlic and if it's a curry, we've added some ginger — we might add a tablespoon or two of tomato paste and brown that briefly to bring out its flavor. ... Then you go ahead and you add the water, you can add the coconut milk, and there are no chunks of tomatoes, per se. I'm thinking of a recipe in the book with potatoes and cauliflower and peas and it's not a tomato curry ... but there is a tablespoon of tomato paste in there that's providing backbone, structure to the dish, and really, depth. And you probably wouldn't identify it in the finished dish, but leave it out and you would notice the difference.

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On soy sauce

Bridget Lancaster: Soy sauce is one of those ingredients that is also umami-packed. It has lots of those glutamates in it. It's kind of a power ingredient when you're talking about vegetarian cooking, very similar to mushrooms: You add a little bit and it's going to give that meaty, savory flavor. The surprising thing is that you don't have to just use it for stir-fry or other types of Asian dishes. We use it as a seasoning, so you can use it [in a] soup. ... We use it to season [vegetarian] meatballs, all sorts of things.

On Parmesan

Lancaster: My very favorite cheese for cooking is Parmesan, for a few different reasons. And I'm talking about the real Parmesan that actually has a rind attached, not the green can attached. The really good Parmesan Reggiano has that crystalline texture. I think you get a lot of punch with a very little amount, so even though it's incredibly expensive, you actually don't have to use a lot to kind of make its presence known. But the best part of it is the rind — I have a whole bag of them in my freezer that I keep. I cut them up into one- or two-inch pieces ... and then any time I'm making a soup, whether it's vegetarian, like a bean soup, or not, I will throw in a Parmesan-cheese rind. If I'm making stock ... and it adds this meaty flavor to dishes itself and it gives a more satisfying feel to the soups. Then [I] fish it out before serving.

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Ultimate Veggie Burger Daniel J. Van Ackere/Courtesy of America's Test Kitchen hide caption

itoggle caption Daniel J. Van Ackere/Courtesy of America's Test Kitchen

Ultimate Veggie Burger

Daniel J. Van Ackere/Courtesy of America's Test Kitchen

On veggie burgers

Bishop: The store-bought ones are not an advertisement for eating or making vegetarian burgers. They're just very sad. ... We developed about a half-dozen [veggie] burger recipes. My favorite contains pinto beans, beets and bulgur and it's got such great flavor. And what I really love is the texture. So bulgur is a type of wheat, it cooks really, really quickly and it gives it kind of that nubby [texture], whether it's a turkey burger or a beef burger. ... The shredded raw beets, they add a little bit of creaminess to it; they add some sweetness to it; they add some nice flavor. ... There's a little bit of ground walnuts, which again, adds some savory notes. ... And then the best part is you serve them with sriracha mayonnaise.

Recipe: Mushroom Bolognese

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Jack Bishop says it's the soy sauce in the Mushroom Bolognese that really makes it pop. Joe Keller/Courtesy of America's Test Kitchen hide caption

itoggle caption Joe Keller/Courtesy of America's Test Kitchen

Jack Bishop says it's the soy sauce in the Mushroom Bolognese that really makes it pop.

Joe Keller/Courtesy of America's Test Kitchen

Why This Recipe Works: We wanted to create a vegetarian pasta sauce that mimicked the rich, long-cooked flavor and hearty texture of Bolognese. Traditional Bolognese sauce gets its rich flavor from a combination of several types of meat, so we turned to two types of mushrooms to replicate that complexity: Dried porcini delivered depth of flavor, while 2 pounds of fresh cremini gave the sauce a satisfying, substantial texture. To further round out the sauce's savory flavor, we added two umami-rich ingredients: soy sauce and tomato paste. To make prep easy, we used the food processor both to chop the cremini roughly and then to finely chop the onion and carrot. Pulsing whole canned tomatoes in the food processor allowed us to get just the right texture. We also used red wine to lend richness and depth and a little sugar for some balancing sweetness. A dash of heavy cream at the end rounded out the sauce and gave it a decadent silkiness. Cremini mushrooms are also known as baby bella ­mushrooms.

(Serves 4 to 6)

2 pounds cremini mushrooms, trimmed and quartered

1 carrot, peeled and chopped

1 small onion, chopped

1 (28-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

ounce dried porcini mushrooms, rinsed and minced

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 cup dry red wine

cup vegetable broth

1 tablespoon soy sauce

Salt and pepper

3 tablespoons heavy cream

1 pound fettuccine or linguine

Grated Parmesan cheese

1. Working in batches, pulse cremini mushrooms in food processor until pieces are no larger than 1/2 inch, 5 to 7 pulses; transfer to large bowl. Pulse carrot and onion in now-empty processor until chopped fine, 5 to 7 pulses; transfer to bowl with mushrooms. Pulse tomatoes and their juice in now-empty processor until chopped fine, 6 to 8 pulses; set aside separately.

2. Melt butter in Dutch oven over medium heat. Add processed vegetables and porcini mushrooms, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, until they release their liquid, about 5 minutes. Uncover, increase heat to medium-high, and cook until liquid has evaporated and vegetables begin to brown, 12 to 15 minutes.

3. Stir in garlic and sugar and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in tomato paste and cook for 1 minute. Stir in wine and simmer until nearly evaporated, about 5 minutes.

4. Stir in processed tomatoes, vegetable broth, soy sauce, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper, and bring to simmer. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until sauce has thickened but is still moist, 8 to 10 minutes. Off heat, stir in cream.

5. Meanwhile, bring 4 quarts water to boil in large pot. Add pasta and 1 tablespoon salt and cook, stirring often, until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup cooking water, then drain pasta and return it to pot. Add sauce and toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and adjust consistency with reserved cooking water as needed. Serve with Parmesan.

Recipe: Potato Vindaloo

Why This Recipe Works: Vindaloo is a complex, spicy dish that blends Portuguese and Indian cuisines into a potent braise featuring warm spices, chiles, wine vinegar, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and mustard seeds. We set out to translate its comfort food appeal into a hearty vegetarian version. Centering our dish around potatoes seemed right, as it required low and slow cooking to develop complex flavors, and a combination of red and sweet potatoes elevated our stew's flavor even further. However, after 45 minutes of simmering, the potatoes still weren't fully cooked. A second look at our ingredients showed us why: The acidic environment created by the ­tomatoes and vinegar was preventing our potatoes from becoming tender. To test our theory, we whipped up another batch, this time leaving out the tomatoes and vinegar until the end, cooking them just enough to mellow their flavors. Sure enough, after just 15 minutes, our potatoes were perfectly tender. To give our vindaloo exceptionally deep flavor, we used a mix of Indian spices plus bay leaves and mustard seed, and simmered them with the potatoes, which soaked up the flavors as they cooked. Serve over rice with a dollop of yogurt.

(Serves 6)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 onions, chopped fine

1 pound red potatoes, unpeeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1 pound sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces

Salt and pepper

10 garlic cloves, minced

4 teaspoons paprika

1 teaspoon ground cumin

3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

2 1/2 cups water

2 bay leaves

1 tablespoon mustard seeds

1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes

2 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1/4 cup minced fresh cilantro

1. Heat oil in Dutch oven over medium heat until shimmering. Add onions, red potatoes, sweet potatoes, and 1/2 teaspoon salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are softened and potatoes begin to soften at edges, 10 to 12 minutes.

2. Stir in garlic, paprika, cumin, cardamom, cayenne and cloves and cook until fragrant and vegetables are well coated, about 2 minutes. Gradually stir in water, scraping up any browned bits. Stir in bay leaves, mustard seeds, and 1 teaspoon salt and bring to simmer. Cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook until potatoes are tender, 15 to 20 minutes.

3. Stir in tomatoes and their juice and vinegar and continue to simmer, uncovered, until flavors are blended and sauce has thickened slightly, about 15 minutes. Discard bay leaves, stir in cilantro, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

Recipes excerpted from America's Test Kitchen: The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook. Excerpted by permission of America's Test Kitchen.

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