With these global tips, you can make the tastiest spice and herb blends yourself
With just a teaspoon of herbs (or more, to taste), you can travel the world from a culinary perspective in a wonderfully simple way. Personally, there are few things I enjoy more in the kitchen than varying basic dishes or ingredients with something that’s easy to do: simply use a different spice blend to put a completely different dish on the table!
For example, with tomato sauce, you can decide you want to head towards India, using spices that turn it into a curry – delicious with boiled potatoes and chickpeas. Or you can opt for classic Mediterranean herbs if you’re going for a real Italian ragù. Lentils: deliciously Moroccan with ras-el-hanout. Or head to Provence with thyme, bay leaf, rosemary and bacon bits. In short: if you always have a few handy spice blends on hand, you can go in so many directions while cooking! With these blends, you’ll cover a large part of the world’s cuisines:
The Mediterranean
The countries around the Mediterranean each have their own characteristic cuisines, flavours and aromas, but there are also similarities. Rosemary, fennel seeds, sage, bay leaf, dill and oregano: all delicious. Use oregano and dried parsley with garlic in a Greek salad with feta, but also with marjoram, thyme and rosemary in a tomato sauce for the tastiest Italian pasta marinara.
India
There isn’t just one Indian cuisine, because it’s an enormous country with major regional differences, and every region has delicious dishes and spices that set it apart. A good starting point is garam masala, which you can buy at virtually any well-stocked Asian supermarket. Spices that you can easily mix yourself for that warm, fragrant, exotic touch include ground ginger, turmeric, coriander seeds, cumin, mustard seeds and fenugreek. Goodness, my mouth is watering just writing this down!
Mexico
The fact that Mexican cuisine is incredibly rich and varied is increasingly making its way into the Netherlands as well. These are exciting flavours and aromas, achieved through the use of strong spices such as allspice, cloves, cinnamon, Mexican oregano, cumin and coriander seeds. Then comes a whole range of chilli varieties, many of which you can find dried or canned at Tjin’s Toko in Amsterdam – definitely worth a visit! With these herbs and spices, you can make the most delicious fillings for tacos, but Mexican cuisine is of course about much more than that, so enjoy a journey of discovery through cookbooks and recipes.
The Middle East
Another fantastic region on a culinary level, with so many countries boasting wonderful flavour traditions of their own. Lebanon (one of FavorFlav’s favourite countries), Turkey, Israel and the countries of North Africa: they all have dishes so delicious that they leave us speechless. Have you ever tried Chef Mounir Toub’s tabbouleh? Absolutely divine. Thyme and oregano are also used generously in these regions, as are cumin and coriander, but you’ll also find aniseed, allspice, cardamom and caraway seeds. And sumac, the wonderful spice we wrote about earlier. Make a lovely blend and taste immediately how it brings your dishes to life. Chicken thigh fillet in the slow cooker with a mixture of some of these spices and a little stock: virtually no effort, and maximum flavour!
China
Chinese cuisine, of course, cannot be painted with one brush either. Just as vast as this country is, its dishes and spices are equally rich and varied from region to region. Ginger, cloves, star anise, fennel seeds and cumin, combined with sesame and, in the Sichuan region, of course, that famous pepper that gives your tongue such a uniquely tingling sensation. Absolutely amazing! You can start very simply with a jar of five-spice powder, which you can now find in virtually every supermarket, and use it to season fish such as salmon, chicken or tofu straight away.
Make it your own
For all these blends, feel free to experiment based on the examples above. It becomes even more delicious if you buy the spices as seeds rather than as powder, toast them briefly in a dry frying pan first, then combine them yourself and grind them in a spice mill. You won’t believe the difference! And one thing applies to everything: buy them in small quantities. A large half-kilo bag from the Asian supermarket or wholesaler may seem appealing and economical, but over time herbs and spices really do lose their flavour and aroma, and you probably aren’t going to get through half a hectogram a month either (that’s a lot, you know, for spices!). So work in small batches, occasionally give a homemade blend to someone, and watch a world of flavours and aromas open up. Bon voyage!
Also read:
- How long do spices stay good?
- These 4 things you should definitely make in the Airfryer (and these 3 definitely not)
- 10 bizarre flavour combinations that taste better than you think
Source: The Spruce Eats
