My Curry Leaf Spice Mix

It's about curry leaf, one of the staple ingredient of South Indian cuisine. Once you get familiar with this aromatic leaves, you are never going to stop loving it. Here is one of the simplest spice mixes based on a key ingredient - curry leaf.

Blog's Category: My Own Fast and Easy, Vegetarian

Intro

This my own curry leaf spice mix is inspired by Indian spice mixes (sometimes called Podi, or Gun Powder) which includes fresh curry leaves. I made this kind of spice mixes numerous times and got somewhat familiar with them to the point I can make my own recipes. This time I made spice which are simple but irresistible. Try it, and I promise you will love it.

The hardest part is finding a place where you can buy fresh curry leaves. Fortunately, I have several Indian grocery stores around where I can buy small pouches with a fresh curry leaves (OMG, stick your nose into this small pouch and close your eyes...mmmm!).


What is it?

Dry-toasted curry leaves, some kind of dry hot pepper (szechuan in my recipe), some coriander, fenugreek seeds and bay leave are all what you need! Grind them and get spice mix with mind blowing, addictive aroma.

Taste Description

Spice has, of course, strong fruity flavor of curry leaf, heat from pepper and layered undertones of bay leaf, coriander and fenugreek. 

How to Serve/Store

Store in airtight container. Just small dash is enough to flavor virtually anything you like - rice, bowl of soup or your homemade pita ships. Try to make dip combining this spice mix with mayo and/or sour cream.
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Curry Leaf Spice Mix 

For about 2 cups of topping:

• 3-4 stems of fresh curry leaves (about  40 leaves), stripped from a stem
• 2 tbs coriander seeds (or use already ground coriander)
• 1-2 tbs fenugreek seeds
• 2 tbs dry szechuan pepper (or 1 -2 small dry red chilies)
• 1 bay leaf

- On a dry skillet, on a low heat, toast all ingredients, stirring, until curry leaves are crispy-dry and coriander seeds are lightly toasted. It can take up to 20 minutes.

- Let it cool down, then grind to medium course.

- Keep spice mix in a airtight container.

- Enjoy!



Notes

- To speed up cooling of toasted ingredients, transfer them from a skillet onto the plate.



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IN PICTURES

Compare curry leaves on this and a previous photo. Here, they are dry and break when folded in half. Coriander seeds are golden versus greenish (on the upper photo). That means toasting is done!

It's really hard to keep your nose away from this aromatic mix.

Blog-checking lines: For the month of April, Sawsan from Chef in disguise challenged us to spice things up by making our own spice blends from scratch