[Sca-cooks] RE: Ras el Haout

[Christine Seelye-King]

I was going through some old messages I'd saved from this list and found
this message from Nanna.
Christianna

Stefan asked:
>Now, we've talked about Ras' balls on this list before but what is
>Ras al Hanout?

>A North African spice mixture - there are different Moroccan, Algerian and
Tunisian versions, and many different variations within each country, as
each spice shop generally has its own versions, which often include over 20
different spices and flavourings - the main ingredients are usually
cardamom, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, turmeric and
cinnamon, and also frequently cloves, cayenne pepper, oregano, rose petals
or rosebuds. And lots of other stuff; it is said that some Moroccan mixtures
include Spanish fly and other rather dubious stuff.

Nanna



It's one of those amorphous blends like "curry."
I actually used google to try and find some recipes.  Ingredients varied
quite a bit.  A fair number included roses, or turmeric, and then there
were the weird ones that included things like spanish fly (!)
So I made myself a list of the most commonly repeated spices and worked
from there--at the time, I had a lot of lovely spices in my cupboard,
but was trying to cut down on some stuff because I was getting ready to
move.
A couple of the recipes mentioned doing the blend as whole spices, and
then roasting/grinding as needed, but I was after a powdered blend, so
that's what I did.  I used roughly equal portions, I think, of most of
the spices, with the exception of the saffron (better part of one little
package, which happened to be what I had in the house) and cayenne (done
at about a quarter the amount of the others, because of its potency).
IIRC, I included the following spices, in no particular order:
Cinnamon (ceylon)
Ginger
Galingale
Mace
Nutmeg
Cloves (a little light on this one, too)
Cardamom (green, decorticated)
Black peppercorns
White peppercorns
Long pepper (only a little)
Cubeb berries
Grains of Paradise
Coriander
Cumin
Cayenne
Saffron
I think there were a few others, too (think I had 20 when I was done),
but those are the main ones.
<snip>
--maire