(no subject)

[unbibium]

I bought myself one of those combination pepper mills and salt shakers.

I'm thinking of getting another one and filling it with some other grindable seed so that I can have it fresh whenever I want. Any recommendations?

My first instinct is to get a bunch of different seeds and make curry powder. I hesitate slightly, because I have to buy like six different kinds of things. All the curry powder recipes I see call for you to put the turmeric in already ground, which strikes me as somehow problematic for dispensing alongside whole peppercorns and seeds. But if it did work, my favorite curry recipes would become even favoriter.

On a side note, I found a tomato-tofu sauce with Iron Chef Morimoto's name on it at Trader Joe's last night. I think I'll make lasagna with it this weekend.

Comments

[cheryln.livejournal.com]

Do you use coriander? That's something that, if you bought whole seeds, you could grind fresh.

Or you could put the other seeds in the pepper part, and the ground turmeric in the salt part, and mix curry powder fresh with minimal effort.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

Excellent idea. I'm surprised I didn't think of it.

I only really use coriander when mixing my own curry powder. I use cumin by itself on occasion, though.

Is there a rule, though, about when you put a spice in based on whether it's fresh or dried -- something like you put fresh ingredients at the end so you don't ruin the fragrance, or something...

Can't wait to try, regardless.

[cheryln.livejournal.com]

Is there a rule, though, about when you put a spice in based on whether it's fresh or dried

There would seem to be one, but I don't know what it is. After all, when I make something like spaghetti sauce, I throw in fresh herbs at or near the beginning and let them simmer away.

When I took a cooking course in New Orleans, though, I learned about "layering" ingredients to get lots of textures out of the same few ingredients: for example, you sautee some of the green peppers in the bottom of the pot, add more with the meat ingredients, and yet more near the end. I would imagine the same technique would work with herbs and spices.

Can't wait to try, regardless.

Please post about how it turns out. The more I thought about this, the trickier it seemed to become. You'd need to get all the seeds mixed in such a way that the proper proportion of each was dispensed through the grinder; and, a peppermill produces a coarser grinding than I would usually use for other spices, I think. But if it works, we cook enough Indian that it would be worth investing in another peppermill to be our curry shaker.

Re:

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

I got mine at K-Mart from the Martha Stewart collection for about $10. It'd be worth it to experiment, I suppose.