Jun. 28, 2021
Cooking In Season
Salad Meals to Beat the Heat
In this recipe round up, I have gathered my best and most delicious summer salad meal recipes in one post, for days when it’s too hot to cook!
This Kerala Masala is one of the first “outside the bottle” Indian spice blends I learned to make on my own – back when I first returned from India, when I was determined to make food that tasted like I remembered from my trip (and from my childhood in an Indo-Canadian neighbourhood). As I slowly learned over the next few years how to manipulate spices into mixtures (masalas), I made this banger of a spice mix. I owe thanks to both Madhur Jaffrey and Vikram Vij, as well as to the various cookbooks and Indian cooks who mentored me along the way.
There is no such thing as curry powder in India. There are myriad spices blends and cooking techniques that reflect some of what a Westerner would understand to be “curry,” but each mixture, or masala, is different, designed with a particular result in mind.
This Kerala Masala is no different. It is designed to be used as a spice mix for coconut curry sauce, specifically to be used on fish & seafood, which is abundant on the coasts of South India. The spices in this mixture play perfectly to the strengths of both creamy coconut and briny seafood, making a curry that delights in every way. This cuisine – the distinctive spices mixes, sauces, coconut, sourdough rice breads, and seafood from the southern provinces of India – remains one of my favourites in the whole world.
I will be sharing a recipe next week, using this spice blend to make one of my favourite dishes: South Indian coconut seafood curry. But in the meantime, you can make this Kerala masala, enjoy the process and the fragrance filling your kitchen. You can use it in place of regular curry powder and see the difference that a fresh homemade spice blend makes.
One of my favourite spice mixtures from India, this complex and fragrant masala is most commonly used in a South Indian coconut curry sauce for seafood.
Jun. 28, 2021
In this recipe round up, I have gathered my best and most delicious summer salad meal recipes in one post, for days when it’s too hot to cook!
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This blend is divinely delish. I’ve been making it since my 1st cooking class with you, about 10 years ago. We loved the seafood version with prawns and I’ve even done a veg version by putting some of roasted tofu (also your recipe) on top. also sometimes I keep it quite a bit longer than 3 months
still tastes lovely. SO YUM! Thank you Heidi.
Thank you, Margaret!!
Great recipe of homemade Kerala masala thanks for sharing
you are welcome!