My Spice Rack

Faizal loves a particular spice mix from Flavor God called Dynamite Seasoning. He usually spinkles generous amounts of it onto chicken wings, then air-fries them. Unfortunately, it seems like this product has been discontinued and no longer available anywhere. So for quite a while, he left the last precious few teaspoons of it untouched, preserving it for the memories.

After we got married, one day when I was wondering what to make for dinner, Faizal suggested I try out the seasoning, and see if I could replicate it. “What an intriguing challenge,” I thought. I made the wings using whatever little that was left of the seasoning, the way he did before. Admittedly, I really skimped on the seasoning. I didn’t have the heart to finish it all off. Perhaps because the chicken was slightly underseasoned, Faizal said they tasted a bit different from what he remembered. Nonetheless, the wings gave me a good picture of what I should aim for.

I wanted to make some Swedish Meatballs for the family, which called for this Swedish grill spice mix. This recipe makes a small batch, slightly over two tablespoons, with the inclusion of rosemary suitable for chicken dishes. Omit the rosemary if you’d like your spice mix to be more generic.

We sometimes need Italian Seasoning for our pastas and such, so if you don’t happen to have any on hand, you can always make a batch of your own using herbs and spices you might already have in your pantry.

This recipe is based on Emeril’s Italian Essence recipe, and used when making Sausage Meatballs with Gravy. As with any spice mix containing onion or garlic powder, which does not keep well at room temperature in this hot, humid Malaysian weather, I always keep this spice mix in the freezer. This should keep it from masuk angin and clumping up.

I’ve been meaning to try out Eman’s kabuli rice recipe for a while now, but that dish requires Saudi spice or baharat, which I didn’t have on hand nor can easily get at stores.  Finally got around to making it over the New Year’s Day long weekend.

I only toasted the spices for about 5 minutes, because I noticed my cumin seeds were getting really brown.  I wonder if it would be better if I toasted it for a full 10 minutes as suggested.  My spices were a bit lumpy after grinding, and I wonder if it was because I didn’t dry the grinder jar well enough, or if it was because there was still some moisture in the spices.  In any case, I stored this in my freezer to make sure it keeps longer.

Can’t wait to try out the kabuli rice.

It took me a while to finally make Eman’s Lamb Meghazlia, mainly because I needed to mix the meghazlia spice mix myself.  Since I have some lamb in the freezer I really needed to get rid of, I set aside some time today to make this spice mix.

What took me a while to figure out was the “besbasa Indian” listed in Eman’s ingredients list.  After some research I thought what she was asking for was bisbas, a spicy Yemeni spice mix, and that was what I used to make my current batch of meghazlia.  While sitting around researching this spice a bit more, I realized that besbasa was another name for mace.  So my meghazlia spice mix is most probably going to be quite different from Eman’s.  Sigh.  Anyway, I’ve noted down both my version and Eman’s version, for my future reference.

I made this spice mix thinking that this was the besbasa Eman was referring to for her meghazlia spice mix recipe.  It turned out that this actually wasn’t what she meant, but in any case I’ll try to figure out what other things I can use this for.

Based on the recipe by Sheba Yemeni Food.

Am trying out Chef Ammar’s Lamb Mandy with Rice tonight, but I didn’t buy his Mandy Spice Mix when I got his Bukhari and Kabsah spice mixes the other day, so I had to make my own.  I found a few seemingly highly rated recipes online, and scaled it up to make 1 cup, with a few tweaks here and there.

Can’t wait to start cooking!

I’m trying out Emeril’s Perfect Roast Chicken today, which requires this Baby Bam spice mix.  Looks like this spice mix is used in quite a few more tasty looking recipes I wanted to try, so I decided it was worth the trouble to make a batch.  The only spice I didn’t have on hand was the celery salt, but I actually happened to have the ingredients required to make my own, so I did just that.  You can probably find celery salt in grocers such as Village Grocer, B.I.G., etc., but you can just simply substitute, since the amount needed is just too small to merit buying an entire bottle.

Recipe by Emeril Lagasse.

Used in the Chicken Mandy With Rice recipe I tried recently, this spice mix can be easily made at home, using common spices which can be found in our hypermarkets in Malaysia.  I usually store my spices in the freezer to keep dry; you know how our humid weather can be. Recipe by the Queen of Sheba.