A Spicy Thought

I came in late in the spice game, having only appreciated the wonders of spices just a couple of years ago, when I first moved out of my family house and started cooking for me and my husband.

It's actually amazing how spices transform the taste of food, and how it can elevate a superbly bland meat like chicken breast into a culinary napalm in your mouth - in a good way! Just a bit of salt does a lot to highlight the different dimensions of the spice mix. So far, I have only used the curry powder from the handful of spicemix boxes my friend N. gave me as a coming-home present from Bangladesh, but I plan to at least use 2 of the mixes this coming week. Watch out for it!

Epices

I got some really cool gifts from Bangladesh. As you may know, my good friend N. came home for a couple of days and gave me a bag filled with boxes of spice mix. It couldn't have come at a better time as I've been on an Indian food frenzy lately. Just last week, we had 2 Indian mains out of the 5 I cooked.

So here are the goodies I got:

clockwise from left: rezala masala, kebab masala, curry powder, tikka masala, tandoori mix

I asked N. how the other spice mixes are used (rezala? Indian/Bangla kebab?) but she told me that she blindly grabbed the boxes whose smells remind her of Bangladesh. Out of all these boxes, she has only cooked with the curry powder mix. Good luck to me, this'll be some great cooking adventure for sure!

I'm defrosting some beef now and I'm raring to use the curry powder that came straight from the source. I'll have to retire my McCormick curry powder for the meantime, I guess.