i condiments! And sauces and dressings and relishes and all that stuff.
Best overall: toum (there’s also an actual brand, “Toom”) - the Mediterranean garlic paste consisting of just raw garlic, lemon, olive oil + salt.
Brand name: Pickapeppa sauce, which i discovered in a recipe for roasted party pecans. It’s Jamaican, and the original is like Worcestershire sauce and ketchup with “secret Caribbean spices”. Recommend if you don’t mind a slightly more sweet flavour than hot/spicy (which is NOT usually me).
I didn’t know that sauce was available at a grocery store! Ignorance fought, yet again. I absolutely love that stuff. I’m not a huge fan of Papa John’s pizza, but I love that garlic dipping sauce. I’ll look for it next time I’m at Kroger’s or Wally World.
Not exactly a hidden gem, but aside from salt and black pepper, smoked paprika is the spice I find myself using the most. It just adds a little…something to so many dishes; vegetables in particular. Try it on your corn on the cob. I love it on green beans that I’ve sautéed with bacon (smoke on smoke!). It’s obviously excellent with eggs (dusted over deviled eggs is my go-to move). It’s almost essential on roasted or pan-seared chicken.
Assuming you like hot food (probably a safe bet if you are a fan of Indian food), and you do your own cooking sometimes, you might enjoy using berbere spice blend - available from Penzey’s, where they have inexplicably renamed it to “Ethiopian spice blend.”*
It’s extremely hot, but also very fenugreek-forward. The NYT cooking section recently published a recipe for berbere meatballs, something created by someone with no preconceived notions about blending influences from a variety of cuisines: it called for berbere, ground beef, panko, and parmesan, among other ingredients. I made it with some trepidation, and boy was it delicious. My hands smelled great for hours afterward, thanks to hand-shaping the meatballs full of berbere spice.
*Anyone know why? I’m wondering if it was because few people in their client base recognize the word “berbere,” or perhaps it’s an inadvertent slur or something. Beats me. I used to buy berbere, by that name, all the time in Egypt.
My mom makes an absolutely amazing black bean pumpkin soup, and it wasn’t until I made it myself that I figured out that a large part of the distinctive flavor to it is the coriander. It’s now right at the front of my spice cupboard, next to the cumin.
And not exactly a “spice”, but crushed olives add a lively zing to many different dishes.
Yeah. This was a one-use spice blend. My first wife’s family had a chopped liver recipe that her Aunt Myrna made. Pretty amazing. At some point, the baking responsibilities were just killing her and she called me and told me I was gonna make the chopped liver that holiday season. Good enough. She gave me the recipe.
The sole spice/ flavor enhancer was this innocently lethal box called G. Washington Golden Seasoning and Broth. This was nothing more than a high-powered sodium delivery mechanism. Whatever spices had crept in around the edges were nothing compared to the blood-pressure smacking effects of the sodiums involved. Holy crap. I used it once, maybe twice. Then simply added most of the spices listed without ANY salt or MSG. Just as tasty.
One additional sweet point about this memory. This was Pittsburgh, these were locals born and bred. It was called “Geewarshington”. One did not do the wash on Saturday. One did the warsh.
I Googled your question, and it sounds like there was some confusion about berbere being from the Ethiopian region, and the Berber tribes that live in the northern Sahara, so calling it “Ethiopian-style” settled any questions.
We live in Astoria, New York. For many years the second largest Greek city on the planet. Behind Athens but ahead of all other cities IN Greece. Needless to say, gyros are everywhere. But I’ve never heard it called “gyro sauce”.
It is tzatziki. Full stop. That is what that is called.
condiments! And sauces and dressings and relishes and all that stuff.