I love spices, I love chillies, and can think of few things that can’t be enhanced by a sprinkle or two of something or another! We have pepper mills, which we use for cooking and on the table, but once,while we were away in self-caring accommodation I bought a little glass jar of peppercorns with a grinder on the top as there wasn’t one in the kitchen.
It came home with us and for a while we didn’t use it as we have our wooden mills full of corns, one with ordinary black pepper, another with mixed, green, pink, red, white and black. I don’t know what inspired me, but I took the little glass mill and put a mixture of spices in with the peppercorns, including a dried chilli. How nice! A sprinkle on salad, a grind on a fried egg, another grind on mashed potato… not to overdo it but just to give a hint of spiciness. I use it all the time now, and yesterday I had to refill it, so in went some peppercorns, cumin, coriander seeds, a couple of cardamom pods, black mustard seeds, fenugreek (which gives everything a lovely yellow tint) a dried chilli… and some seeds which were unlabelled and I couldn’t recognize!
So what should I have for lunch… salad with feta cheese, I think, and a sprinkle of spice!
Lois Elsden 