FOOD: Playing With All the Spices

I love spices, I love buying them, I love the smell of them, I love cooking with them. They are one of my favorite things when it comes to food. They are fantastic at adding flavor into your meals but they also have some great health properties - take ginger known for it's role in aiding digestive uses, particularly nausea or turmeric considered for it's properties in protecting against cognitive decline. 

Most of the time I like to keep my supplies well stocked and tend to have around 25 herbs and spices at anyone time - why so many, well I make all my own home made curries (Indian and Thai) and I'm starting to experiment with more Mexican dishes, so having a stock of spices always comes in handy. Buying spices can be a little pricey to start with, but luckily they last and store well, plus you don't really need to have all of them.

If making your own homemade Indian curries spikes your interest, I'd suggest stocking up on at least the following;

Spices:

• Coriander
• Turmeric
• Chili powder
• Cumin
• Cinnamon
• Curry powder 

Fresh:

• Herbs - especially cilantro, known as coriander in the UK
• Ginger
• Garlic

Extras:

• Onion seeds
• Mustard seeds
• Garlic powder
• Ginger powder
• Nutmeg
• Cardamon (if you can find it)

While I've been making my own curries for the last three years, I've never considered making my own spice blend. No excuse, no real reason why. So when I came across this article from Woman's Health on DIY Spice Blends I thought, well why the hell not. The article has a great collection of 9 spices designed to help loose weight - which is a great added benefit of spices. The one I'm sharing is a curry blend, which those the spices it uses will be excellent for an Indian curry.

Curry Blend  

2 tablespoons of cumin powder

2 tablespoons of ground coriander

2 tablespoons of turmeric

1 1/2 teaspoons of ground cardamon*

1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper

* Cardamon isn't always the easiest spice to find, but you can use a mix of cinnamon and nutmeg - equal parts of each to make an alternative. 

Spice blenders are basically some of the easiest recipes of literally just mixing all the ingredients together and away you go. If you like your curries a mild to medium spice, work with using about 1/2 a tablespoon of the blend.

What about you? Do you love your spices too?!

FOOD: Mango Chicken Curry

It's high time I shared my favorite curry recipe, the fact that we have a home made curry, made from scratch every Wednesday seems to pass by a lot on my blog. Admittedly I have selfish reasons of the page the recipe is on is very well worn out after getting stuck to another page, so this is for my own records as much is it is for sharing with you all.

It's a pretty straight forward curry recipe typically using the spices you should already have if curry making is your thing. It's sweet, mild and full of flavor. While it takes a bit in preparation, it's quick to cook and well worth the time. 

1 medium mango (go by your personal taste by how ripe you want it)

1 good sized chicken thigh or breast

1/4 teaspoon of onion seeds

1 teaspoon fresh ginger pulp

1/2 teaspoon of fresh garlic pulp

1 teaspoon of chilli powder

1/4 teaspoon of turmeric

1 teaspoon of ground coriander

2 tablespoons of oil (vegetable, corn or peanut - whatever you have) 

4 curry leaves (or a teaspoon of curry powder)

1 large onion

1 cup of water

2 medium tomatoes

2 medium green chilli's seeded and chopped

1 good sized teaspoon of dry cilantro (2 tablespoons if you have it fresh) also note coriander is often known as cilantro in the US

First things first, peel the mango and slice into blocks and divided into two. Take one of the piles and place into a bowl, adding in the chicken cubes, onion seeds, ginger, garlic, chilli powder, turmeric and ground coriander and mix well. 

In your pan, heat the oil and pop in the sliced onions, once golden add in the curry leaves (which I never have to use about a teaspoon of curry powder instead). Gradually add in the chicken pieces and finish off with pouring in the water. Lower the heat and simmer for 12 to 15 minutes, string every now and again until the chicken is cooked and the water has been absorbed. 

Once the 15 minutes have passed, add in the remain half of the mango, the chopped up tomatoes, chillies and cilantro, give it a quick stir and heat through and then serve.

This curry takes me to my happy place every time.

What are your favorite curries to make or eat?