if you read many food blogs, you are bound to see little logos from various forums such as the daring bakers, tuesdays with dorie, bittman mondays, cookie carnival, you want pies with that, bread baking day and souper sundays. recently, i joined two of the baking forums; the daring bakers and you want pies with that. each month you are given a challenge and then you enter the results on a blog page on a specific date. members vote on who they think did the best job and the winner picks a theme for an upcoming challenge. my first challenge for the daring bakers was a flourless chocolate cake with homemade ice cream, it was fun and we enjoyed eating the results. for my first pie challenge, the theme was herbs and spices. how vague can it get? but also, how many possibilities come to mind. sweet and/or savory, international and ethnic or just plain over the top and cutting edge cuisine.
i chose to go simple and just incorporate both herbs and spices into a pear pie. do i ever do anything that is simple? no, of course not. i chose to use a spice blend that is traditionally
used in moroccan cooking, raz al hanout. it is sort of like the moroccan version of curry and everyone has their own favorite blend which can include as many as 50 different herbs and spices. the other part of the recipe that i put my own twist to was the crust. i used a combination of butter and apple wood smoked bacon fat to make a nice and flaky crust with a hint of smoke.
before i could get started on anything though, i needed the spices for the blend. raz al hanout traditionally includes spices like cardamom, cinnamon, pepper, turmeric, chilis, cumin and coriander and herbs such as lavender and rose petals. my blend included all of those plus nutmeg, star anise, cloves, anise seed, mace, ginger and allspice. a total of 15 spices and 2 herbs. all except the lavender, which i already had, was obtained by visiting two stores near my house.
first stop was apna bazaar. this is such a great little shop. the owners are so friendly and helpful. when i walked in with my list in hand, i was greeted with an offer to help me find everything on it. when i was unsure of something because it was not labeled in english, my questions were answered quickly. whenever i need whole spices, this is always my first stop.
even though i found almost everything at apna bazaar, some of the bags were a little larger than i wanted so i made a trip to my other favorite international store, K&S World Market. due to the large latino clientele, i was able to find small packets of cinnamon sticks, cumin and coriander seeds as well as rose petals. purchasing smaller quantities is always better in terms of freshness.
here are most of the herbs and spices i used to make my raz al hanout: cinnamon sticks, green cardamom, lavender, mace, star anise, coriander, black pepper, turmeric, nutmeg, wild black cardamom, cumin, rose petals, cloves, allspice and chili. not n the picture is ginger and anise seed but they were added to the blend.
think globally, buy locally-in other words, explore what different ethnic foods are in your neighborhood and shop in international stores for some of the best culinary fun you can have. check out my personal blog, where i write about all of my baking challenges,
