We got to try out our latest pack of spices from thespicery.com yesterday, and once again we were impressed.

What’s in the Box?

The pack arrived last Friday and contained a whole host of spice sachets and recipe cards. In the little box was:

• A recipe kit  for Singapore Noodles, along with a sachet of sauce spices, a sachet of noodle spices and some chillies.
• A recipe kit for Banana Fritters with Spiced Syrup and Sesame Seeds, along with some batter spices, some syrup spices and some cool looking white and black sesame seeds
• A recipe kit for Kathis Rolls with Spicy Tomato Chutney, along with marinade spices, Chaat Masala and Chutney spices
• A free sample of ‘Rumble in the Crumble‘ spices to add to fruit crumbles.

Spices Box

Singapore Noodles

After a bit of shopping for some ingredients yesterday I decided to make the Singapore Noodles. They were fairly easy to make. First the sauce spices were added to soy sauce, vinegar and lots of our home-produced honey to make a delicious smelling sauce, half of which was used to marinade the pork. As I’ve mentioned before the spice packs that come with the kit contain a blend of various spices. They do tell you what spices are in the blend, but not the quantities of each. In some cases you could replicate the blend yourself, especially when there aren’t too many constituent spices, but in this case there were quite a few, many of which aren’t necessarily store-cupboard staples, so buying them as a pre-packaged blend is probably easier, and of course means that the spices are much fresher. The sauce spices contained:

• Garlic
• Ginger
• Star Anise
• Cassia
• Fennel
• Sichaun Pepper
• Cloves
• Paprika

I then made a plain omelette with a couple of eggs and sliced this into thin slices, before caramelising the pork and sauce spice marinade in the frying pan. Next was a quick stir fry of sliced onions, red peppers, ginger and garlic, before adding the Noodle Spices. These had quite a different fragrance to them as they cooked with a little touch of curry flavour. This spice mix contained:

• Coriander
• Cumin
• Black Pepper
• Fenugreek
• Turmeric
• Ginger
• Mustard
• Cinnamon
• Cloves
• Chilli
• Cardamon
• Star Anise
• Cassia
• Fennel
• Sichaun Pepper
• Paprika
• Lemongrass

Once this had stir fired for a couple of minutes the chillies were added to give quite a kick, along with bean sprouts, prawns and spring onions. Finally the pork, shredded egg and and rice noodles were added and the whole concoction stir fried for 5 minutes before we devoured it along with the sauce. There was plenty for four people so we kept half of it for another meal.

Singapore Noodles

The chilies in it certainly gave it quite a kick, but it was once again delicious. The number of spices and the freshness of these spices compared to those that have been in our store-cupboard for years gave the meal a real depth of flavours. It’s difficult to describe but so far we have been impressed with the boxes we’ve had from thespicery.com and the meals they have produced have been a complete success.

Banana Fritters

Following the delight of the Singapore Noodles we decided that we may as well make a meal of it and have the Banana Fritters as well. We rarely do any deep-fat frying, but went for it anyway. First making a syrup infused with the syrup spices of:

• Star Anise
• Cassia Quills
• Ginger pieces

Then making a batter using the batter spices which included:

• Ginger
• Five Spice (Star Anise, Cassia, Fennel, Sichaun Pepper, Cloves)

We then coated the banana pieces in batter and deep fried them for a couple of minutes. The recipe said to fry them for 5 minutes but I think our fat was too hot so ours just had a quick dip. We only used half of the spice mixes seeing as the recipe said it serves 4 and there was only two of us. As it happened though even with only half the recipe there was enough batter leftover for another night so we should get to treat ourselves to banana fritters a few more times yet.

We served the fritters topped with the spiced syrup and sprinkled with sesame seeds along with some of our homemade chocolate ice-cream and we were pleasantly surprised. Deep fried food isn’t usually our thing mainly because the process of deep fat frying scares Anna and does tend to make the kitchen smell a little, but the results were nice. A spicy batter and despite only getting a quick dip in the oil the bananas were warm and soft too. We’ve kept the oil we fried them in and will be repeating the entire meal again tonight.

It’s also a recipe that should be fairly easy to replicate ourselves with spices and ingredients that we always have in the cupboard.

I can’t wait to try out the Kathi Rolls with Spicy Tomato Chutney recipe kit now as the description in the recipe card sounds like the sort of thing we will love.

Tags: Recipes & Cooking