Spice Blog

Meet the Expert

Tell us a little about yourself I have written 27 cookbooks so far and book number 28 is in the pipeline. My first book.  The Complete Indian Cookbook, sold more...

Spicy Adventures

Bizarre Foods - Gross or gourmet? Imagine eating a beating cobra heart, bird's saliva, fish eyes, animal testicles or bull's semen! From the mildly distasteful to the truly repugnant, bizarre...

Understanding Spices

What is pandan? Pandan is a tropical plant in the Pandanus (screwpine) genus, which is found extensively in Southeast Asia. Similar to the palm, the plant has spiky, bright green...

Understanding Spices

Smoothies are a great way to incorporate more vitamins and nutrients into your diet. They’re colourful, taste delicious and are easy to knock down in just a few sips. While...

Understanding Spices

What is baharat? Baharat, meaning ‘spices’ in Arabic, is a popular Middle Eastern spice blend. It’s as essential to Middle Eastern cuisine as garam masala is to Indian food. The...

Understanding Spices

Sumac is a staple within Middle Eastern cuisine, just like salt and pepper in the UK.  Sumac is a focal point in Turkish, Lebanese and Arabian cooking, where it adds...

Understanding Spices

Shakshuka (also spelt with an O, shakshouka), is a staple dish on any Israeli breakfast table. In fact, they eat it at breakfast, lunch and dinner - both at home...

Understanding Spices

If you’ve never seen black garlic before, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s just regular garlic gone bad. But don’t bin it just yet – black garlic is actually a...

Spicy Adventures

Recently, the news gave us a welcome respite from the never-ending world pandemic. For a few days, we were all distracted and enthralled by the story of a container ship...

Spicy Adventures

When it comes to desserts, it doesn’t get better than the ones you find in Indonesia. Everyone seems to have a sweet tooth and it’s easy to see why. Cakes,...

Spicy Adventures

For as long as life has existed on Earth, it has always needed energy to survive. This energy has often come in the form of food - something that’s edible...

Featured, Spicy Adventures

Spread across 17,000 islands and home to 270 million people, Indonesia is a diverse mix of landscapes, people, cultures and traditions. It also has a rich food heritage which has...

Understanding Spices

The woman who taught England to cook Ask just about any person in the UK if they know who Nigella Lawson is and they’ll look at you as if you’re...

Spicy Adventures

With Easter fast approaching (seriously, where has the time gone?) you may be thinking about this year’s Easter menu. While roasted lamb and hot cross buns are your typical Easter...

Meet the Expert

Monisha Bharadwaj is an award winning author, chef, food historian and a food writer based in London, UK. Many of her 16 books have been shortlisted for and won several...

Featured, Understanding Spices

What is Cajun blackening? Blackening is a traditional Cajun cooking technique that adds a complex flavour and dark colour to fish, shellfish and chicken. The meat is dipped in butter,...

Spicy Adventures

For as long as any of us living beings can remember, frogs legs have always been synonymous with French cuisine. You can’t go to Paris without trying frogs legs. Oh...

Spicy Adventures

Best organic review ever! Queen of the kitchen Nigella Lawson gave us a nice surprise recently and shared a video of her delicious version of Moroccan Lamb…using our very own...

Spicy Adventures

Picture this. A large group of gruff, sweaty men stand atop a hill in Gloucestershire, south-west England. They’re kitted out in a mismatch of multicoloured exercise gear, as if they’re...

Understanding Spices

What are cloves? Cloves are one of the oldest spices in existence and have a culinary and medical history dating back thousands of years. This pungent, aromatic spice comes from...

Meet the Expert

Tell us about yourself I’ve been writing about food for longer than I care to admit, nearly twenty five years as YOU Magazine’s cookery writer, and over twenty books (my...

Spicy Adventures

Picture this: a beautiful tropical island tucked away in the Indonesian archipelago. It’s a place where you’ll find stunning, empty beaches. Rolling hills covered in lush, green rainforest that tumbles...

Featured, Understanding Spices

What is Jerk Seasoning? No matter where you are in the world, Jamaican cooking can transport you to the tropics  thanks to the distinctive flavours of the ubiquitous jerk seasoning....

Understanding Spices

What is khmeli suneli? The fun sounding khmeli suneli is a Georgian spice blend which is used in many different recipes from the Caucasus region. Translating to ‘dried spices’, the...

Spicy Adventures

After a long, bleak winter, the latest announcements from the British PM Boris Johnson have finally offered a glimmer of hope in the UK. Perhaps, after all, there is light...

Understanding Spices

What is advieh? Literally translating to ‘spice’ in Persian, advieh is a spice blend used in Iranian cuisine. It’s a staple in Persian cooking, often compared to India’s garam masala....

Spicy Adventures

Beef rendang is a dish that has always been popular throughout South East Asia and in more recent times, throughout the world. In 2011, CNN International ran a poll in...

Health and Wellbeing

Eating healthily is one of the choices we can make to give ourselves the best possible chance of physical, mental and emotional well-being. "Food is better medicine than drugs."(Patrick Holford)....

Understanding Spices

If you haven’t had the chance to do so already, have a read of our article highlighting the plight of some of your favourite foods. In short, the future does...

Understanding Spices

This spicy Japanese spice blend may sound exotic, but since appearing in recipes by Jamie Oliver and the Hairy Bikers, it’s popping up more and more in British cupboards. What...

Understanding Spices

By now, it’s impossible to deny climate change and the fact that the earth is well on its way in a sixth mass extinction event. Whichever way you look, from...

Understanding Spices

What is candlenut? The candlenut (Aleurites moluccanus) is a flowering tree and is also known as candleberry, Indian walnut, kemiri, varnish tree, nuez de la India, buah keras, godou or...

Understanding Spices

Lasagne is one of those classic Italian pasta dishes. It’s beloved not just by humans, but cats too - Garfield being the chief champion of it amongst the feline kingdom...

Spicy Adventures

There has never been a better time to brush up on your cooking skills. Make the most of being ‘stuck’ indoors by gaining some new knowledge in the kitchen, whether...

Understanding Spices

Dal (also known as daal, dahl or dhal), according to Wikipedia, "is a term used in the Indian subcontinent for dried, split pulses (that is, lentils, peas and beans) that...

Understanding Spices

Ah, pizza. Who doesn’t love pizza? It’s up there with chocolate as one of the most universally adored foods - a dish that’s so simple, yet brings us so much...