Finally I Have A Spice Grinder
Some of you will remember that I’ve often said that I need to buy a spice grinder because I sometimes encounter a recipe that requires the spices to be freshly roasted and ground before being added to a curry.
I’ve used a mortar and pestle for a while now and it sometimes takes a long time to grind the spices and the grinding is not always successful. I find that grinding a cinnamon stick and dried chillies often leaves big pieces that will not turn into a powder, no matter how long I crush them.
Sometimes it takes over 30 minutes to grind a range of spices.
So I finally left the house to search for a spice grinder. I thought that this would be an easy task but the search took longer than expected.
In all, I visited the kitchen appliances section of 5 department stores and found that only 2 of these stores stocked a spice grinder. And both of the stores had the same model of grinder. One store had the grinder prices 30% lower than the other so it won’t surprise you to learn that I went after the bargain.
I took my new possession home, took it out of its wrapping, gave it a quick wash and put it into a cupboard to await the first usage.
I immediately scanned through the range of Curry Focus recipes, found one that needed the spices to be ground (the great Lamb Xacutti recipe) and then went out to buy the ingredients that I needed.
I was soon roasting the spices for the recipe and enjoying the lovely aromas that enveloped the kitchen during the roasting process. I let the spices cool down and then put them into the spice grinder, breaking the cinnamon stick into two pieces, and then turned the spice grinder on.
In less than a minute I had a pile of smoothly ground spices that gave off the most amazing aroma.
I put the ground spices into a bowl for later use and wiped the spice grinder clean with a damp cloth and then put it away in the cupboard again – this is all the regular maintenance that is needed.
I find it hard to believe that I hadn’t purchased a spice grinder ages ago. It takes all of the effort out of a fairly boring task. And I know that I’ll be using the spice grinder regularly from now onwards.
