Transcripts
1. Introduction: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Dominic and welcome to my course. What is this course about? We will take a deep dive into the world of Middle Eastern spices. We will look at what spices there are, how we can prepare them, how we can store them, and we will learn a multitude of different recipes along the way. In the beginning, we'll first take a look at what we really need, the tools. Spoiler, there aren't really many, so you don't have to get expensive stuff. This course is really for everyone. Take a look at how to store your spices and which spices there are, and then we will take a look at different spice plants. We will take a really tiny, tiny dive into the world of aroma science and food science in general, but fear not, it won't be very theoretical, we will just take a brief look on it. The goal of this course is to really understand why we use certain spices and when to properly use them. We will learn about more than 15 different spices and the characteristics of each, and I think I have anecdotal to what happened to me and my experiences with the spices, so most likely that you don't do the same mistakes I did when I started out. Yes, there will be a class project, there is a very informal spice plan from the Middle East Coast, baharat, which is a very regional blend, and this means that if you follow along, you can't really mess it up because there are so many different possibilities how this could work out. If you listen closely, maybe try out one or two of the recipes, I think this class project really will elevate your cooking.
2. Tools: When I say we don't need many tools, what do I mean? In fact, we most likely only need one tool, and it's a mortar and a pestle. There are different kinds. You can get a very tiny one made from ceramics. I wouldn't really recommend this. I had one, but I was always in fear that I will break it. Really depending on what you're crushing, if you are working with them, seeds, for example, cumin, it's very easy to crush on that. If you have something like coriander, it gets a little bit tougher. I really recommend this 31 made out of stone. My girlfriend bought this for me, and I've been using this daily almost. However, there's an alternative. I was living in a dorm actually, and people said that I had too many kitchen gadgets, so I didn't work with a mortar and pestle for a long time. I had a spice MOOC, and these things can be very handy as well. They are very simple. They work like a food processor. They have plates, you put stuff in it, and push the button. It will grind it up for you. But we will run into a problem later that it's very hard to determine when it's fine, and sometimes one thing is coarser. If you're watching this, maybe think about getting a mortar and pestle. Also, it looks really cool.
3. Warming Spices: Let's start with our first warming spice. I'm pretty sure all of you, or at least most of you, I hope most of you know it, and it's cinnamon. It's a very prominent spice, at least in the winter time around Christmas. I'm pretty sure most of you will associate it with cookies, warm drinks, coffee, pumpkin spice latte even, or cakes in general. But in the Middle Eastern cuisine and in most other cuisines as well, cinnamon is not exclusively bound to Christmas or to winter, so very worshiped spice. We enjoy it for its warming characteristics. You can use it very universally. Every spice blend you want to add a little warmth to it, pretty good chance that cinnamon will work. For us, it's important to think outside of Christmas. Especially in the beginning, you might think that adding cinnamon will add a Christmas you note that, but as we go along and blend several other spices to it, it will lose this note eventually will just add like a spicy worth to it. The next on our list, we have clove, which for me at least is very similar to cinnamon, but it's very dominant, a harsh spice, and I would use this sparingly. I never in a blend use more than one or two of these. Fun fact, my grandmother used to make a liquor out of this. Sour cherry liquor. So every time I smell cloves, I think of my grandmother's alcohol. Nevertheless, very good, has a very fruity note to it. The next one and probably the realist looking one in this category is star anise, which looks like a star crushed. They look like little petals and not like stars anymore. But star anise has a very hard, it reminds me of liquorish, which is what most people say. It has a very warming characteristic, but it's not touchingly warm. Like a cinnamon for example, is very medicinal. That is good if you want something that's a little more sophisticated, medicinal, I would even say, you could go for star anise. It's a very solid choice. When I was younger, I was always using the seeds from the star anise. I will try to open one up for you. But what I found out isn't really the pod itself. It's not so much the seed. It's the pod where the flavor comes from. So use this whole. Especially with this one, you will either need a spice mill or a very sturdy mortar and pestle because it's very hard. It's similar to bark, almost. So hard to crash. Nevertheless, very good spice, very versatile. You couldn't think of Middle Eastern cuisine without star anise. Now, star anise's little brother, which is a regular anise. They are very similar to be honest. You could get away with only buying one. Anise has the flavor rich tense, more to fennel even. It reminds me of drinking tea because people in Germany usually drink a lot of fennel tea. But you could change out star anise for regular anise, get away with it. The difference is maybe not so obvious like the other spices. But you can try to swap this out and see what happens. Now, for the last one, I didn't know we didn't have this at home when I was younger, but it's called allspice, and it's really round. It's a around berry. Everything looked weird so far, but this one looks rather normal. Allspice is, I would describe it as it tastes a little bit of everything. If you combine all the spices, we had all those warming spices, you would probably get something like allspice. I always say it's a very solid choice. For me, it reminds me of clove, but it also has like tons of chili powder, I think. I like to use this in Spanish dishes a lot. It also has a floral bouquet to it.
4. Fragrant Spices: What are fragrant spices? This is a little bit of a weird one because isn't very spice fragrant by itself. Definitely every spice should be fragrant if it's fresh. But the one thing that sets this apart is they belong to a group called, or they're very heavy on a compound called terpene, which is a much broader category than phenols. Then to the citrus sap terpenes, woody terpenes, and a whole bunch of other stuff which we won't go through, but they are very different. We have the phenols which are similar to each other. Now, we have the terpenes and some of them are very easy to work with, or even some of them are harder. One rule that we learned so far, that everything will work together, doesn't work so good with these spices. However, if you really want to elevate your kitchen and add some interesting elements to it, like I said, if you only mix phenols together, it might be a little bit dull. Everything will be warming and maybe have a little licorice character, but these spices will definitely elevate your class spice blends. Let's start out again with something that will maybe remind you of Christmas, and it's nutmeg. Not only nutmeg, but we will also talk about nutmeg's little brother, mace, which isn't really known, or at least I didn't know it until I bought it. What is nutmeg used for? Nutmeg is very dominant in a cinnamon spice. If you enjoy cinnamon spice latte or stuff like that, nutmeg will definitely be familiar to you. A little warning, as we had with clove, nutmeg, is very potent, especially in Middle Eastern dishes. I messed up a ton of it because I added too much nutmeg or even mace. Word of caution, don't add too much salt, little by little. I mentioned mace, what is mace? Most people only know nutmeg. I did only know nutmeg at first. If you happen to stumble across mace in its true form, so I only had a powder, but if you happen to find whole mace, it will be even yellow because it looks very outward ish somewhat. Mace is basically the outer shell of nutmeg when it grows. When it's harvested, the outer shell is removed. It looks like a little pot of tentacles. It's right, basically it's mace. Deceit is the nutmeg in the pot, is later on the mace, and they are very similar. If you don't happen to have both, it's not a tragedy. Most people won't even recognize the difference. But I found mace to be way more floral, it's way more delicate. For me, if I make something that's heavy, like a stew, for example, I would add nutmeg. If I would make something a bit more light, a bit more airy, like we will talk about baba ganoush later on, I would add the mace. Now, a spice many of you will probably think, where has it been all the time? This be like in the first place, and yes, it is the god of spices, it's triple [inaudible] spice. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's cumin. Cumin is very prominent in the Middle East and even in India, East Asia in general. Even in Germany, most people I know will in general have a very Western-like spice shelf, but everyone will have cumin. It's a Middle East edition. Because cumin is very recognizable, it comes from a compound called cumin aldehyde. It's very fragrant and it's warm to everything. Also little, some sharp nodes. If you open up a fresh pick of cumin, you will definitely recognize this. What I really want to emphasize here is buy it fresh, honestly. It will make a big difference. Usually, when I serve someone fresh cumin or the whole seeds and not the powder, many people don't even recognize that its cumin because it has a much more complex flavor. It isn't just sharp and cinnamony, but it's well-rounded, balanced and all. Buy your cumin fresh. Later on we will talk about roasting your spices, which is especially important with cumin since it unlocks its true potential. Go for the seeds, trust me. Now, if you've ever tried some Middle Eastern bread, like in Germany its doner kebab which is very popular, and there are many more others, you will notice. You will immediately think this smells like bread. What I talk about is nigella, also called black cumin. You really can't think of anything else except for bread when you smell this. I usually don't use this in spice blends. But if I make blend, especially to solve with some baba ganoush or also vegetables, I would definitely sprinkle some of this onto it, but this will immediately transform it into a Middle Eastern dish. You can even sprinkle this on vegetables, which is perfectly fine. I do that from time to time. It's just something I tend to use in isolation when I don't make blends. But go ahead. I know of some blends that use it. If you want to experiment a little bit, it's a very nice spice and has very toasty nodes to it. Now, this little pots are cardamom, which is for me very hard to pronounce, to be honest. As you can see, there are two varieties. You can get the green cardamom and the black one. The green is very common, but I rarely see the black varieties. If you can get a hold of the black one, I really recommend it. For me it is much more delicious. I do enjoy the black one more. The black ones are a little bit more into toxicide while the green ones tends to be very medicinal. I knew cardamom mainly from tea before I started cooking with spices. It really does remind me of tea. This one could fit into the warming category even. It tends to work well with staranin cinnamon and stuff like that. It's really something else. Word of caution, don't use too much. How do you approach this? You can either move the whole pot, which I usually do because I don't like to throw things away, but you can remove the outer shell and just use the pretty seeds. If you're starting out, if you're afraid of adding maybe too much cardamom or don't know how to cook with it, maybe use the seeds. They're much more subtle and they crash very easily. Later on you can easily add the whole pot. Now, coriander seeds do look very unimpressive. If you think of a seed, this is most likely what you're thinking of. Very round, very yellowish. Nothing special compared to some other spices, but they're very versatile. Personally, I never make pickle things without adding coriander because I like the flavor in pickles. But this one maybe isn't as dominant as other spices, but it will work with a lot of things. How I would approach this, I would definitely roast it. I tend to never use it unroasted because I really think that's a nice warmth to it. If you toast it, you will immediately recognize that it's like you're making popcorn or even bread. It comes from a compound or either a class of compounds called piperazines which have this smell of toasted bread. If you want to add taste to your dish, you can use coriander seeds. Protip, you can add this to coleslaw. I started doing this and people really compliment me with my coleslaw since that if you maybe want to do something other than a Middle Eastern cuisine, its coleslaw and coriander seeds, I can really recommend that one. Now, last but not least, sesame. With sesame, it's really similar to coriander. I would never use it unroasted, definitely roast this one. Sesame is a flavor you all know since it's added to a whole lot of things. I think of granola, bread, even some candies have it. Sesame is very similar to coriander, but the taste is more familiar. If you want to have a very heavy blend to taste like home, maybe opt for sesame instead of coriander because most people know this one better. Sesame really is fine in blends and it's very tasty, but you couldn't imagine Middle Eastern cuisine without a sauce called tahina which is made from exclusively sesame and olive oil. If you ever stumbled upon any dish like, for example, who most will make baba ganoush and even roasted vegetables, this is added to everything. But I think of sesame more as the sauce rather than a spice. However, I usually use this. This is my favorite spice, but I tend to sprinkle it on everything. As you would do with pepper and salt, maybe just sprinkle a little bit of roasted crushed sesame, and it will make things toaster immediately.
5. Roasting: Before we start developing our first blend, which would be for baba ganoush, in the next lesson, I really want to talk about roasting of spices, which I mentioned 20 times so far. But why it's important, and how do we approach this? Spices are very fragrant themselves if you open up the pack, and especially if you buy already mixed spices, or millet spices, they are very often already toasted, so they smell fresher. What toasting really does is it makes the flavor for us more accessible. Think about it, most flavors are stored in oils in spices, and if you warm it up, the spice will give its oil away more freely, so if you ever touched a warm spice or a warmer spice blend, your fingers tend to be very oily after that. Also, most spices work very well when toasted. There happens a lot chemically, where the aromas will change a little bit. I mentioned this earlier. There is a compound class called pyrazines, which is yes, toasted bread, toasted nuts. By toasting different things you add a little bit more pyrazines to it, [inaudible] like coriander seeds, and sesame, you will immediately recognize it. Once you smell the difference, you will really understand why. Toasting spice is very easy. You add them to a dry pan, so we won't need oil, we won't need water, you just add your spices, and gently heat them. The only thing to take care of is the question, when are they done? With food you would go by brownness, and with spices it's very easy. As soon as you step out of the kitchen and it smells like spices, they're ready. They will tell you when they're ready, because everything will smell very spicy. Maybe open up a window or two when you're making this, or not. I like to enjoy that when my flat smells like fresh spices. After roasting, I usually tend to let them stay a couple of minutes so they are not piping hot. I can touch them, and then they're very, very hot. Like I said, they will release oils, and if you add them to your mortar and pestle, it will be a very mushy mess. You can still cook with it, but if you want to have a really, really fine powder, and just easily storable, maybe let them cool down. Again, they will still be warm, but they shouldn't be piping hot.
6. Recipe: Baba Ganoush: Now, for our first spice blend, we will make baba ganoush, which some of you maybe know, some of you don't, but most of you will know hummus, for sure and baba ganoush is very similar. Instead of chickpeas, we will use aubergines or eggplants, however you want to call them. We will start off by simply chopping some eggplants in half, putting them in a baking sheet, salting them and this is important because this will have to pull out the moisture later on. Then add a very healthy amount of olive oil to it and we're about done with them, so we'll put them in the oven for about half an hour until they are golden crispy. Now, we will make a spice blend which will fit very well with the baba ganoush and we will start out by taking three cardamon pods. However, we don't want to use the husk, so a very neat trick is to simply put them in a grinder and grind them little bit, so the little black pods will separate. Remove the husk, and we are left with the cardamon pods, very flavorful but not so dominant. If you want, you can easily make this in the spice move so we don't care about it being coarse or not. Now, after that, take a cinnamon stick and I usually use for one healthy portion of baba ganoush, half a cinnamon stick. After that, we will take them a signature flavor which will be cumin and this spoon is rather small so I think this equates to about one-and- a half or two teaspoons of cumin seeds. These are already pre-roasted and I want to emphasize it, roasting them really makes a difference so roast yours. After that, we will add one small petal of star anise to give it more body and then it's time to crush. For this, we definitely want a fine powder. Personally, I don't mind some chunks of cinnamon, this is was likely to be left and either you blend it longer, use a spice more or later on, I will show you how to remove the solids. For now, this is perfectly fine and all you have left to do it's a little bit of mace. We didn't add this to the grinder because mace is already powdered, so it would only clog up our process, we're only grinding what needs to be grinded. We will add 1/8 of a teaspoon, really tiny amount. If you are worried, you will have to much mace, simply don't add it, this is perfectly fine on its own. Now, how to make baba ganoush and it's very easy because we need two main ingredients, which will be a lemon juice and tahini. For those of you who know tahini, you might wonder, what is the black stuff? I actually made my own from black sesames and it looks a little bit unusual. The baba ganoush will turn out in pale black or gray, but I actually like this. It's a little bit of a shocker for people. Traditionally, it would be brown so if you buy tahini in the store, it will be a very brown, golden baba ganoush, which is beautiful. [inaudible], you simply take the lemon juice, add the tahini and stir it until it's creamy, so it's really a magic trick when you combine tahini and lemon juice and mix it. It will turn very hard and creamy, and we want that creamy texture. Then for our little extra flavor, I like to add a bulb of garlic. Obviously, our beautifully roasted eggplants, you can use the whole egg plant but the skin will be a little bit chunky. If you want a really smooth baba ganoush, I would scoop it out. I usually let the skin on, I don't really care about little chunks, but for the sake of making a very creamy baba ganoush, we will just be skinless. The way you do this, simply take a spoon and remove the inner parts and throw everything in the blender. Now, our spice blender, I would start rather low, so I would add about two teaspoons, blend this up and see how it goes. If it needs more spice, you can easily add more spice later on. Some people like to add olive oil to their baba ganoush, but I like to serve mine on top of it. It makes a very airy baba ganoush with some oil. But if you want to add it to the blender, I would go for about five tablespoons. That's about it, it's a very easy recipe. Basically, you just need to throw things in the blender, which is very convenient, and especially with our own spice blend, it will make a very tasty baba ganoush. The way you would eat this, or how I like to eat this is to simply dip some bread in it, or you can serve this alongside veggies. There, it's very tasty.
7. Allstar Spices: Now after getting to know our very basic spices and having a first dive into how to blend them and how to make a delicious Baba Ganoush, we will talk about the allstars. I tend to call them the allstars because they really make or break a dish. They are not easy to use and they're somewhat mysterious in a way. You will maybe understand why, but they're very essential. The spices we learned so far, they aren't really bound to region, and if you look into, let's say, Chinese cuisine you will find a lot of these spices. They're very similar, except that we would have a rather different approach in how to blend them. These spices really are very iconic for the Middle East. Now that you have your basics done and understand why we add what, we can really dive deeper into these spices. The first one is very weird because it's lime. But not just any lime, they have a very special preparation for it. It's lime that is cooked in salt, water and then fermented and dried. After that it's black. It looks a little bit yucky at first, but as soon as you open it up, it will taste very sour. Why would you add this instead of fresh lime, you may ask. The reason for that is that during fermentation, a lot of things take place, the elements change, and in general, we get a more complex flavor. Using this, you can get something very citrusy without being sour as if you would have used fresh lime. This one is very sour and you can try little bit. You can rub a little bit between your fingers and lick it. There is a very popular candy in Germany which has a very similar taste that I found. Some citrusy powder you can add to drinks, but children usually chugg it down without water. You can probably add this to sweets, I haven't done that too much. This really shines. I like to use this in stews because stews tend to be a little bit heavy. Depending on your stew, for example, add a lot of meat to it, it tends to be very heavy, like [inaudible]. We used to eat it in fall and winter, but you can sommer it up that if you want to call it like that by adding a little bit of this dried lemons to it. Later on, I will show you a blend with these lemons because I think it's really fascinating. Now, the next one is called sumac. I probably should've mentioned sumac early on because it's so integral to parts of the Middle East. Sumac, if the dried lime smells like lemon, the sumac smells like vinegar. In Germany they're called the fruit of the vinegar tree and I think that's pretty accurate. Also sumac is very weird one, I've never seen the berries, only the powder. I use this almost exclusively to flavor yogurt. If you have yogurt at home, it's always flavored with sumac. It is very tangy in itself, but also very floral. Immediately after this lesson, we will go through a Spice land which uses sumac and not only for yogurt, more often use it as a rich spice blend called zaatar, but I really like this one. Definitely if you are thinking, well, these are a lot of spices, I don't know what to get, they're so expensive, get this, get sumac. Really interesting. You can eat it like that, it's a little bit too tangy for me, but it's very interesting. I'm a huge fan, I will talk more about it later. The last one I want to talk about is a spice called anardana or anardana. I don't really know how to pronounce it. This one is rather strange. I read about it very early on when I was researching a little bit of Middle Eastern cuisine, but it was very hard to find some. Chances are you probably have to order this online if you want some, or you could even make this yourself. What this spice basically is, is dried pomegranate seeds, and there are two kinds. You can get dried seeds with still the red flesh on them, and they're softer so making a fine powder is little bit harder or you can just get the seed itself, which is then dried and I think it's a little bit roasted. If you happen to have dehydrate, you could do this in an oven. You can make this by yourself. Which is very easy, and from one pomegranate you get a lot of seeds and a lot of spice, so rather cheap, rather easy. I said earlier that the allstar spices will either make or break a dish, which is not entirely true for this, because anardana in itself is not very flavorful. Even if you do mix it, you tend to use more than let's say mace or nutmeg. But this one is special because you can add it to everything. It pairs very well with vanilla, for example. Because when you think about pomegranates, it's really citrusy, so it works really really well with other citrusy things like the dried lime, for example, or even sumac, but it still tastes fresh. You can add some greenness, some herbiness to things. It goes very well with star anise, it's really a question of what you want to accentuate. If you want to use dried lime, for example, and you're thinking, well, dried lime is very citrusy in itself, but it's not the kind of citrusy you want, you want something mellower, let's say for example. You could substitute a little bit of the dried lime with the anardana and get something very citrusy, but something broader, it's more complex and you will have these green nodes and the sweet nodes, they're still in there, but then you will taste mostly citrusy. Definitely an interesting one, and if you're a foodie and you do stuff like that, you can make it very easily on your own. We're now done with our allstar spices and now we have about 15 spices. We know about 15 spices, we know how to use them. We already did use some of them, some not. As we get little bit more into it, we will do a spice blend called zaatar. Very delicious, I do recommend this to everyone to at least try to make it yourself, which will include sumac, one of our allstar spices. I will talk a little bit about how to use it and how to build a blend around one spice, for example. Let's get into a very important topic, which is: I don't know what to add, what should I add? Sometimes the answer may be very easy if you find that something is lacking and sometimes it may be very hard. It all boils down to a general question as: How do we properly combine spices?
8. Combining Spices: In the beginning, we had fennels which said they don't have many rules, you can mix and match them depending on what you like. But as we introduce more spices and a little bit more complex spices and some other aroma classes, so to say some categories, the things get a little bit more complicated. How do they approach this? In general, I would advise you, before even blending, we need a thing called smell library. Think about an artist, even if you know the techniques you need to draw something, you still need to practice. The best thing you can do is open up the spice rack maybe once a day, maybe once a week, and just smell the different things you have bought, or you have at home. Then think about it. What does it smell like? Is this more on the citrusy side? Is this more earthy? Is this spicy? This is tangy. All these different fancy words to describe a smell. But then just try it out. If you find that things are very similar, I mean, that's the whole concept of why fennels work. They are very similar and that's why it worked well. Let's say you have a star anise and want to blend it but want to use another fennel? How can we approach this? Step 1, think about what does star anise remind you? For me, it's this memory on licorice-y flavor on the one side, but also it's medicinal. It could be in a tea blend. So I describe medicinal, and one thing that comes to my mind is cardamom, for example. You could go on and crash these two and smell your result. Either it works or not, it has a little bit of a trial and error elements to it. Spoiler, I can say star anise and cardamom work, in fact, very well together in different blends. What I really want, I want to encourage all of you, if you have an idea, try it out. I mean, it either works or not. But still, word of courage. Spices are, even though some don't work as well together, most of them will form something at least interesting.
9. Recipe: Za'atar: Now finally we will make my favorite spice splint, which is called Za'atar. The beauty of this is you won't even need a recipe because we add everything in the same proportions. We will start out by taking three teaspoons of sesame seeds. I advise you to roast the sesame seeds, mine are already pre-roasted. Of course we will heat Cuban. I usually tend to use maybe two and a half teaspoons. I mean, you can go three. I like a more sesame heavy version, but it's up to you however you want it. Now we will take our first also spice, which is sumac. The way all this works is the sumac is very tingly and the sesame is smelling roasty and it creates this beautiful combination of flavors. In the end we will add something I didn't mention so far, but most of you know from Italian cuisine, which is oregano and it would like a little herbie freshness to it. We will take three teaspoons of oregano and then a little pinch of salt, and then send to crush. For this one, you don't need a fine powder. We just want to crush this a little bit and open up the sesame which will release the flavor then. But this can be coarse, just this very tasty when its course and it gets a little bit of texture to your dishes. My favorite way to use this is to simply sprinkle it with some onions. You can either use fresh onions and pickled ones. I usually like onions as a condiment for dishes and sauteed onions are so beautifully to go. You get sprinklers and everything. I think you could eat sprinkles on pasta, pizza, meat, fish, whatever you like. I like to keep things simple and just take little bit of onion.
10. Recipe: Zhug: Now, with this spice flint we will take a little bit of a different approach, it's called Zhug. What we have here is roasted coriander and cumin of each two teaspoons, some green chilies, and some chopped coriander and parsley. We will first crush our spices, and then I will explain how to make this. Some will add everything to a motar. Add two cardamom pods to it, one clove and then a couple of green peppercorns. Then it's time to simply grant this and we want to have a semi fine consistency. For it's a little course it's fine. I'm usually not a huge fan of biting into a piece of clove, so keep that in mind. However, consistency is not so important with this one, and also don't forget to remove the cardamom shells. When everything is nice and grinded, we will add our herbs and our chilis to this. Then we will once again really try to crush this into a fine paste. It will have the consistency of maybe pesto or if you know it chimichurri maybe. When we're done with that, it will turn into a paste but more of a chunky green mash, we will add this to another container. Add healthy amount of olive oil and some lemon juice for added freshness to it. Give it a little mix and adjust the oil. This should be pretty oily, so don't make this too dry, and if it's nice and oily, it will keep indefinitely in your fridge. This is the top I use on everything condiment. I think this goes beautifully on potatoes, for example.
11. Class Project: Baharat: Finally, after I've talked for so long, it's your turn now. Like I already mentioned, our class project will be to make a spice blend called Baharat, which doesn't really have many roots to it. You can basically do whatever you want. If you've followed along, you will manage to make a very tasty Baharat on your own. I'm pretty confident at that. But to give you some tips, I could maybe describe a thing or two how bad it should taste so you're not completely clueless. First, I would advise you to start with that. We need some warming components. You can think about what we talked about our fennels, what you have at home and slowly start building a warming base and after that, our Baharat it shouldn't be bland. I like to add some spicy things to make it a little bit more interesting. To counteract warming this, I like to add something rather medicinal to it. If you want to make a rather special Baharat, so if you half a spice and you really wanted it in there and you really want it to shine, you can try to focus on one or two dominant spices. You can basically choose whatever you want and you can put your whole blend around it. After this lesson, there will be one where our show how I make my Baharat or either one version of how to make it, which will have a nice twist at the end. It's definitely worth to watch it. That's about it. You can go and experiment a little bit. If you want, you can post your result in the comments and I'll be very glad to see what you did and what you'd come up with.
12. Class Project: Example: Now I will show you how I make my version of baharat and like I told you there are so many possibilities how this could work out. If you have a different approach, it's totally fine. It's just an example, especially because I wanted to show how to use the dried lemon because it's such an interesting and versatile spice. You'll start out by taking half a stick of cinnamon and a tiny piece of [inaudible] and three little allspice berries. Then we will add three teaspoons of cumin. So far this is very similar like in the [inaudible] plant, but this will make it very solid base. Also we'll add a tiny amount of mace, and a bunch of red peppercorns for some extra spice. Now we've got to crush it up. Then we will add half of a dried lemon. Also for a little secret ingredient, we will add one teaspoon of dried peppermint. We made a very general base leg in the [inaudible], but we expended this. We expended some joint limb and peppermint and sometimes you can work your way up like this. You can take spice blend you already made and alter it little bit. I'm trying to crush everything. With the dried lemons, sometimes they don't crush so well, so I remove some bigger parts. In general, if you have bigger parts in the spice blends and you want to remove them, you don't have to fish it out one by one, you can simply pass it through a sieve. I will show you how to use it. We will make some very easy roasted vegetables. I will start out by cutting up some onions, peppers, and eggplants, and one beautiful yellow zucchini. After that, we will drizzle little of some olive oil, and add a couple of teaspoons of our spice blend to it. Some salt and give it a nice mix, so other thing is coated. Simply roast until it's high brownish. For me it's usually about 40 minutes for about an hour. Yes, it is as easier that.
Dominik Toric
