Recipes
Za'atar Lamb Chops
This simple recipe is quick and flavorful. The classic combination of Green Za'atar and lamb is always a winner, and we've also paired both fresh and dried herbs in the marinade for maximum flavor. Oregano was the fresh herb of choice for this version, but rosemary, marjoram or a mixture would also be wonderful. Pick your favorite!
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FODMAP Friendly Salmon Chowder
This salmon chowder recipe is missing some surprising ingredients! Onions and garlic are two of the most challenging foods to eliminate for the FODMAP diet, and two of the most critical! Enter Asafoetida, the perfect spice to add flavors of onion and garlic without using the vegetables themselves. This intensely pungent spice fills the gap nicely when you have to eliminate these essential ingredients. It infuses loads of flavor into this chowder alongside Herbes de Provence and Urfa Biber. You won't believe we've left out the onion and garlic.Baking the sweet potato and roasting the vegetables before adding them to the soup intensifies their flavor, and we've added a sprinkle of spice to each step to really spread the flavors around.
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Cajun Cobb Salad
I won't kid you, this Cajun Cobb salad has a lot of ingredients that require individual prep, but it is SO worth the effort! A Cobb salad is wonderful in its own right, but when you add layers of flavor with Cajun blackened shrimp, caramelized vegetables with Herbes de Provence and a generous splash of peach-infused white balsamic vinegar it becomes something spectacular.
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Southwest Pumpkin Soup
This southwest pumpkin soup is a delicious fall treat, perfectly spiced with warm heat from our Chorizo Bomb. Sultry smoke from our perennial favorite, smoked paprika, rounds out the taste. Cooking your own pumpkin for this recipe is really easy, but the canned pureé works fine as well. Serve it up with crusty bread and a nice porter or stout and you’ve got an instant Oktoberfest!
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Sri Lankan Banh Mi
Who doesn't love a great sandwich! We are all fans of banh mi sandwiches, and loved this recipe from Andrea Nguyen's The Banh Mi Handbook: Recipes for Crazy-Delicious Vietnamese Sandwiches. We have tried many different types of banh mi, and loved this one made with a Sri Lankan Curry.From the author: "When Viet people eat curry with baguette, they typically dip the bread into the spiced coconut-scented sauce. San Francisco chef Alex Ong sent me his recipe for this bewitching curry (the name comes from the dark-colored spice blend), insisting that it would be perfect stuffed inside a baguette for banh mi. He was right, but to avoid a soggy sandwich, I hand shredded the cooked chicken and recooked it in the sauce, allowing it to fry in the residual oil and become encrusted with the seasonings. It became like an Indonesian rendang or, as my husband put it, a curried chicken carnitas. It’s fantastic."
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Sheng Jian Baozi with Chile Oil
We rarely have come across a dumpling that we wouldn't eat, regardless of what cuisine that dumpling is from! We were very happy to find Andrea Nguyen's classic Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More, which certainly took care of our obsession with all dumplings, and finger food, too! From the Author: "If you like pot stickers and steamed buns, you’ll love these spongy-crisp pan-fried treats from Shanghai, where typically they are cooked in humongous shallow pans (much like large paella pans) with wooden lids. These buns are made of yeast dough that is filled with an aromatic pork mixture and then fried and steamed in a skillet. Cooking under cover with a bit of water delivers plenty of moisture to puff up the buns. Ground beef chuck or chicken thigh can stand in for the pork in this recipe. A bāozi is a mini bāo (bun) and for that reason, I like to keep these true to their name and shape small ones. However, you can elect to form sixteen medium-size (23/4-inch) buns. Roll the dough circles out to 3-1/4 inches in diameter and use about 4 teaspoons of filing for each bun; increase the water and cooking time a tad.Many Asian cooks employ—to great success—a cakey, snowy-white Cantonese-style dough made from low-gluten cake flour or from a quickie flour and baking powder blend. This dough is different; it has more depth, and its loft and resilience comes from combining yeast and baking powder; fast-rising yeast works like a champ. All-purpose flour with a moderate amount of gluten, such as Gold Medal brand widely available at supermarkets, is what I prefer for this dough. Use bleached flour for a slightly lighter and brighter finish.Used in Chinese, Japanese, and Southeast Asian cooking, chile oil is easy to prepare at home, and it’s infinitely better than store-bought. Its intense heat enlivens many foods, especially dumplings, which benefit when chile oil is part of the dipping sauce or used as a garnish. Some cooks add aromatics, such as ginger, star anise, and Sichuan peppercorns, to the oil, but I like to keep the chile flavor pure. While you may use other cooking oils, such as canola oil, my preference is for the kind of peanut oil often sold at Chinese markets, which is cold pressed and filled with the aroma of roasted peanuts. It is texturally light, has a high smoking point, and offers a wonderful nuttiness that pairs well with the intense chile heat. Lion & Globe peanut oil from Hong Kong is terrific. Use just the infused oil or include the chile flakes for an extra brow-wiping experience.
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Heavenly Hawaij Mushroom Soup
This Heavenly Hawaij Soup is the perfect starter for a long holiday feast. Combining aromatic spices, earthy mushrooms and velvety cream, it is as decadent as holiday fare should be. Cardamom, turmeric and saffron are the essential spice elements of the Yemenese blend Hawaij, and they play wonderfully in this exotic mushroom soup. Serve as elegant soup shots to start a meal or by the bowl as a first course. It's a leftover that will have you sneaking back to the kitchen in the middle of the night!
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Get Your Sausage-Making on with Chorizo Bomb!
World Spice's Chorizo Bomb spice blend has been a favorite of our restaurant clients for years, so it was no surprise that it started flying off the shelves as soon as we started offering it to our retail family. This versatile blend can be used to make a Mexican-style chorizo, or even a North African-style merguez sausage, as links or patties. It pulls double, triple, and quadruple duty as a great grill seasoning, taco and fajita spice, or in simple beans and rice. A little smoky from the Pasilla Oaxacas, sweet smoked paprika, and Chipotle flakes, a little herbaceous from the generous dose of oregano, thyme, and marjoram, and a bit sweet from the Hungarian paprika... well, you'll see. There's a reason we call it the "bomb!"So, how do you use it? We're testing additional recipes right now, but in the meantime, here are easy patty-making recipes for both Mexican chorizo and North African mergeuz sausage. P.S. If you decide to go all D.I.Y. homemade, here's a great article explaining how to grind your own meat for patties as well as case up your sausage links: how to make your own sausage.
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Salmon Gravlax with Dill Pollen
I love making gravlax because it is such a versatile dish. The cured salmon slices can be used to make elegant hors d'oeuvres, they can be served with a few simple sides to make a nice cool lunch on a hot day, the scraps are great in an omelette for breakfast, and being "cured-but-not-cooked" makes gravlax perfect for coaxing a timid diner into trying more adventurous raw dishes. Most recipes call for fresh dill and while that works just fine, using Dill Pollen creates explosive "pops" of dill flavor that are hard to imitate with other methods. Using some Beet Powder in the sugar mixture adds a beautiful reddish hue to the outer crust of the filet, and the transition from bright salmon orange to deep beet red allows a creative cook to arrange the slices into stunning displays. So this summer when you come home from your fishing trips, try a salmon recipe that just can't be beet.
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