We’re proud to bring this family recipe to you as part of a collaboration with our friend Suman Shah’s Fork on a Road. This versatile Indian spice blend is used across India, and you’ll find as many variations in its recipe as there are families in India. This one is bursting with aromatics, a deep toasted fragrance and a hint of heat from MA grown chile peppers.

Contains:
cumin, coriander, cinnamon, black pepper, cardamom, mace, Indian bay leaf, cloves, chilies, daggad phool (stone lichen).

Suman writes:

“As a child when I'd come home from boarding school during the summer, the large courtyard in our family home would be abuzz with smells and sounds of preserving, rolling and pounding. My grandmother, mother, aunts and sisters would prepare spices, pickles and papadums for the entire year. Red chilies would stretch across yards of muslin drying out in abandon, and the yellow stains from haldi (turmeric), on the large wooden pestle would leave an imprint of the simmering heat and home. And as I headed back to school with homemade tuck flavored with spices, the country would cool off with the onset of the monsoons.

It now seems appropriate that the first time I walked into Curio Spice Co. to meet Claire, the owner, was on a drizzly monsoon-like morning. The aromas that engulfed me in her cozy, spice filled store brought me right back into that family courtyard. A warm hug from the cinnamon, cloves and ginger felt like a friend, the vibrancy of the turmeric and chilies reminded me of meals long forgotten. And in Claire's generous curiosity about spices, with her genuine passion for what role flavors play to enhance our lives through food, sealed our mutual desire for collaboration. “