[Sca-cooks] RE: Ras el Haout

[Naquiba Katira al-Maghrebiyya]

Yes, it means something like "head of the shop" and
indeed every spice shop has it's own blend.  A couple
of my spice books have recipes as do some of Paula
Wolfert's cookbooks and they are all different.  So, I
suggest you go with the common ingredients and
add/subtract increase/decrease as your own tastes
direct you.  Then you are "head" of your OWN shop!!

I haven't done so myself yet, but I do have dried rose
buds and some of the other more esoteric items (not
the illegal ones like spanish fly (an aphrodisiac)) so
I can try an known combination and they play from
there.  I know I have particular tastes when it comes
to curry powders so I will probably tend to work
around those ingredients.

Katira


--- Christine Seelye-King <kingstaste at mindspring.com>
wrote:
> 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
> 
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