Herbie's Spices (a division of Hemphill Pty Ltd) (ABN 75 077 549 583) 745 Darling Street ROZELLE NSW 2039 AUSTRALIA Tel: (02) 9555 6035 Fax: (02) 9555 6037 Email: herbie@herbies.com.au

• Thursday Night Meal Ideas
• Menu 1 - Featuring "Warm Lamb Salad" & "Spiced Stuffed Apples"
• Menu 2 - Featuring "Lamb Tagine" and "Yoghurt with Blueberries"
• 2005 Spice Discovery Tour
• Over-use of colourings
• Harvey Nichols stores in the UK

Thursday Night Meal Ideas

Do you lack a true appreciation of Thursday? It’s on the run-down to the week’s end, it’s almost Friday, and it’s a handy evening to catch up with friends when the weekend calendar is just too busy. As a friend so rightly says: Thursday comes but once a week, so you must make the most of it! With this in mind, we’re giving you a couple of Thursday-night-with-friends quick after-work menus to make sure that your Thursdays are as good as they should be. Use cubes of Turkish bread, dipped in olive oil then dukkah or Ockkah to have with a drink, thereby doing away with the need for an entrée.
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Menu 1 - Featuring "Warm Lamb Salad" & "Spiced Stuffed Apples"

Menu 1: Start with Warm Lamb Salad as follows:

• 4 lamb backstraps or tenderloins
• 4 teaspoons sumac
• 4 cups spirali pasta or similar
• 1 cup corn kernels
• 1 cup torn mint leaves
• 24 tiny tomatoes, halved
• 2 Tablespoons good olive oil
• 4 dessertspoons hummus

Coat the lamb with the sumac. Cook the pasta following the directions on the pack, meanwhile cook the lamb quickly on a hot barbecue, approximately 2 minutes per side or longer to taste. Rest the lamb briefly while you drain the pasta. Combine the pasta, tomatoes, mint leaves and olive oil in a large bowl. Slice the lamb into thin rounds and fold through the pasta salad. Serve in four bowls, topped with a dollop of hummus and an extra sprinkle of sumac.

Then a quick pud courtesy of the microwave, Spiced Stuffed Apples:

• 2 large Granny Smith apples
• 4 dates, finely chopped
• 4 cubes crystallized ginger, finely chopped
• 8 plump raisins, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons Mixed Spice
• 3 teaspoons honey

Halve the apples and scoop out the core section. Combine the chopped fruit, mixed spice and half the honey in a small bowl, then spoon filling into the hole left by the core of the apple. Place the apple halves close together in a buttered dish, then drizzle the remaining honey over. Microwave on medium for 4 or 5 minutes, until flesh is soft and fluffy. (Actual time will depend on your microwave). Serve with ice cream, cream or yoghurt.

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Menu 2 - Featuring "Lamb Tagine" and "Yoghurt with Blueberries"

Menu 2: Start with a warming Lamb Tagine, using the recipe on the back of our Tagine Spice Mix, which you have cleverly started while you were making Wednesday’s dinner. While it’s reheating in the oven, spread a few Lebanese flatbreads with oil and za’atar, pop them into the oven for a few minutes to crisp, then break them into shards as pre-dinner nibbles. Serve the tagine with cous cous to which you have added a teaspoon of Ras el Hanout and a tablespoon of very finely chopped preserved lemon.

For a delicious, easy dessert, get yourself some really good quality fruit yoghurt (Harris Farm markets in Sydney or Prahran markets in Melbourne are good sources) and mix it with fresh or thawed frozen blueberries. Combine in a serving bowl and sprinkle lightly with sumac. (Yes, for those of you who think sumac is only for lamb and tomatoes, just try it on yoghurt for a layering of tangy-on-tangy flavours!)

So there you have it – Thursday evenings with friends will get your weekend off to an early start in the best possible way.
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2005 Spice Discovery Tour

The brochure for our January 2005 Spice Discovery Tour is now available on request, or check the website for all the details. We’re excited with even more fine-tuning of the itinerary, and this coming trip will be a great adventure as well as a tremendous learning voyage of discovery … but, sorry, you’ll be subjected to regular force-feeding of fantastic Indian food
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Over-use of colourings

We were interested to find an article written by John Bingham in The Scotsman about the over-use of colourings in the ever-popular chicken tikka masala (tandoori and butter chicken) – and Australia’s not much different in this regard. In just one county of England, 57% of Indian restaurants were found to use “illegal and potentially dangerous” levels of the dyes tartrazine (E102), Sunset Yellow (E110) and Ponceau 4R (E124). These are all linked to hyperactivity in children, as well as all sorts of nasty symptoms too many to mention. Norway is the only country to have banned all three of these, Finland has banned tartrazine and Sunset Yellow, and only Ponceau 4R is banned in the USA. The colours are used to fulfill customers’ expectations, although we all know the colour makes absolutely no difference to the taste of the food. You will find no artificial colours in our Tandoori spice mix, or any of our blends. Our tandoori is coloured with turmeric and paprika, and if you want to make the colour brighter, you can use beetroot powder. Although good looking food is important, you eat with your taste buds, not your eyes.
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Harvey Nichols stores in the UK

Although we have been selling internationally to on-line customers for many years, we are about to go international in a more tangible way. From September, all Harvey Nichols stores in the UK will stock a range of 30 of our products. So hurrah, now your offspring and family living in London, Leeds, Manchester or Edinburgh can get their Herbie’s fix without having to ask you to post it to them! We will be travelling over there in September to help promote the launch of the products, and are confident that our relationship with Harvey Nic’s will be a long and happy one. You can rest assured that growing on the international scene will not in any way change the appreciation and personal attention that we give you, our shop and mail order customers.
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Happy spicing ….