March Staff Testing

This month, Spicerers Maria, Andrea, Dan, Rosie, Chris and Kelly got the chance to test out recipes at home to determine any last tweaks before we begin blending, designing and packing for the upcoming Subscription Boxes...

Read on to see how it went!

Chris' Ethiopian Injera with Chicken T’ibs

World Kitchen Explorer

Having had some really good experiences of Ethiopian food in the past, I was really looking to trying out this recipe for Injera (fermented flatbreads flavoured with tamarind) and Chicken T’ibs (a kind of stew spiced with grains of paradise, berbere, paprika et al.). Here’s how I got on!!

The T’ibs was delicious, comforting and hearty, and its richness contrasted really nicely with the sharpness of the Awaze sauce (which was a favourite amongst everyone!), a tangy chilli sauce containing mustard, lemon, paprika and berbere. The almost spongey texture and slight bitterness of the Injera worked really well with the different components of the meal, plus I felt it was important to have this ‘dry’ element to work with the sauce-based dishes. The all-round favourite seemed to be the Shiro, another delicious stew containing tomato, ground red lentils, garlic, onion and ginger, and dangerously good with a bit of cottage cheese!

Overall this was a great meal, really fun to prepare and (of course) eat, the different flavours and textures were wonderfully balanced, hearty and filling but not too rich!

Maria's Sri Lankan Wambatu Curry with Coconut Sambol

Meat Free Magic

I loved testing this recipe at home as one of my dreams is going to Sri Lanka. It just seems like a great country to travel around and the food seems a great mix of fresh flavours.

One of my favourites vegetables is Aubergines so it was exciting to prepare this aubergine curry at home! The whole meal was a great success and as we ate it all as always, the recipe is supposed to serve 4 but we ate it all.

Great combination of my favourites ingredients: coconut, mango, aubergines, ginger and coriander!

Andrea's Fish and Chips

Food Truck

This turned out to be one of the most enjoyable testers that I've done - possibly due to the amount of alcohol that was being consumed for the duration of the prep...

It also helped that we had a whole party of people over to help us taste, including fellow Spicerer Maria. The meal itself was a Mexican twist on the classic beach-side meal of fish & chips (what's not to love?). Everyone loved the chipotle ketchup (even my husband who refuses to eat or be near ketchup at the best of times!) and all the other accompaniments.

Preparing the meal itself was pretty straightforward. My first batch of fish came out absolutely perfect. Then I decided to turn the heat on the oil down so the second batch didn't come out as well. Anyway, it was a great night and this a great meal to serve if you want to impress friends with a delicious classic meal.

Kelly's South African BBQ

BBQ Round The World

This month here at The Spicery I jumped at my second chance to test a recipe this time the South african Braai (Bbq).

It was a friends birthday, what better way to say happy birthday than ‘make your own birthday dinner’. I thought it would be a really fun way of hanging out and catching up.

I still to this day have no idea how we managed to make so many dishes from such few ingredients, one bag of shopping. We Stuck to the recipe and took it in terms. Ellen made the Potato salad, Chakalaka and boerewors patties and I took the Pili pili sauce, Carrot sambal, Blatjang and the vetkoek. You would think this would speed things up but it didn't really, mainly because we wanted to chat and enjoy the process (along with the wine…), so from start to finsh with a wee break in between it took about and hour and 40mins. Which was perfect while waiting for three others to arrive

We both were overwhelmed by the results of the fried bread, so easy and so good. I personally really liked the blatjang spices, we had some left so we brushed the boerewors patties with this right at the last min. Also the steak seasoning, this really helpped to get a lovely char on the meat. It was just a shame the sun was not shining

Rosie's Date Night in Amritsar

Date Night

Here are my notes from the Date Night recipe!
I didn't find the dishes overly 'spicey' at all, a lovely flavour to each part, but not overpowering. I forgot to make the dough for the Kulcha until after making the salad, all worked out though! I Really enjoyed making it, it was so much easier than I thought it would be and particularly liked the flavour and texture of the Dhal, it was so easy to make, which was useful as I didn't have weighing scales so estimated measurements, but still worked out well.

Overall enjoyed making and eating this meal recipe and would recommend it!