If you've ever looked at a recipe for pickles or chutneys (like our tomato chutney posted last week), you may have encountered an ingredient simply called "pickling spice." What's in pickling spice, and should you buy it premixed or make your own?
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Flavored salts are an easy, quick way to enhance simple dishes at the table, and some are also quite easy to make at home instead of buying in jars at specialty markets.

This particular salt is also known as gomasio, a traditional Japanese condiment. Gomasio is also a staple of the macrobiotic diet, partly because of the nutritious oils in sesame seeds, and partly because the sesame oil holds and enhances the taste of the salt so that much less salt can be used. We like to sprinkle this on breakfast eggs and in salads, and it is especially delicious over rice. More

Masala, in Indian cuisine, just means spices or a mix of spices - although it does sometimes refer to the sauce the spices are used in, like chicken tikka masala. Garam masala is one of many masalas in the Indian kitchen, with garam meaning warm, or hot. The mix is different in every household, but it usually includes the warm flavors of cinnamon and cardamom.

I use cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, cumin, coriander, nutmeg, and pepper, all toasted and ground fine. This mix can then be used in curries, lentils, soups or just sprinkled in some scrambled eggs. The work involved in making your own spice mix is minimal, but the difference is always very noticeable. More