Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 340 kcal | 96 kcal |
| Protein | 14.5 g | 4.1 g |
| Fat | 13.7 g | 3.9 g |
| saturated | 1.6 g | 0.4 g |
| Carbohydrate | 34.2 g | 9.7 g |
| sugars | 1.5 g | 0.4 g |
| Fibre | 21.1 g | 6 g |
| Sodium | 110 mg | 31 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup coriander seeds
- 1/4 cup cumin seeds
- 3 tablespoons black peppercorns
- 1 1/2 tablespoons green cardamom pods
- 1 1/2 teaspoons whole cloves
- 2 cinnamon sticks, about 7 cm each
- 4 dried bay leaves
- 1/2 whole nutmeg
Instructions
- Split the cardamom pods with the flat of a knife and tip the small black seeds out. The husks are woody and add nothing but bulk, and they will not grind down with the rest.
- Break the cinnamon sticks into pieces roughly the size of the cardamom seeds, and crumble the bay leaves. Everything wants to be about the same size going into the pan, or the small spices burn while the big ones are still raw.
- Toast everything except the nutmeg in a dry frying pan over a medium heat, moving it constantly, for about two minutes. It is done when the smell changes from dusty to sweet and the seeds have gone a couple of shades darker. This is the step people rush, and it is the step that makes the blend.
- Tip it straight out onto a cold plate. A hot pan keeps cooking after the heat is off, and burnt cumin is bitter in a way nothing later fixes.
- Let it cool completely — genuinely cold, not warm. Warm spice goes gummy in a grinder and coats the blades instead of powdering.
- Grind to a fine powder in a spice grinder or a mortar, then grate the nutmeg in at the end. Nutmeg is soft and oily enough to clog a grinder, and it is easier to judge by eye when it goes in last.
- Spread the ground blend thinly on a lined tray and give it half an hour on the machine at its lowest setting before it goes anywhere near a jar. A grinder puts heat into spice, heat brings a little moisture to the surface, and a blend sealed up in that state cakes into a solid disc within the month.
- Keep it in a small jar with a tight lid, in a cupboard rather than on a shelf in the light. Make a modest quantity rather than a year of it: the toasted aromatics that took all this trouble are the first thing to fade, and they are largely gone inside three months.
- Stir it into a dish in the last minute of cooking, or over the top at the table. Garam masala fried at the start of a recipe loses the aromatics that the toasting just built.
