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NEWSLETTER: Spring 2002
Information on Dal Although we are not specifically an Indian spice shop, we sometimes find ourselves in conversation with our customers about the identities of the various dals. It can be confusing when your recipe calls for toor dal or channa dal … what exactly does it mean? So here’s a quick reference for identifying the most common ones: Channa dal gram lentils – matte yellow,
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NEWSLETTER: Winter 2004
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
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NEWSLETTER: Winter 2005
Setting the Record Straight! Over the last eight years, Australian cooks have become more knowledgeable about, and more comfortable with, all sorts of spices, and we’d like to think that these newsletters have had a hand in that. So we beg to set a common misconception straight – Middle Eastern food is not Moroccan! So often one hears or reads about “Moroccan” food and spices which
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NEWSLETTER: Summer 2005/2006
Our Spice Kits As Christmas approaches for the ninth time since the opening of the doors at Herbie’s, we have been doing some soul-searching. Are our little gift kits becoming old hat? Should we be looking for new and interesting, albeit more expensive, packaging? Apparently we’re alone with these thoughts, as our customers continue to love them and come back for more. Herbie’s gift
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NEWSLETTER: Summer 2007/2008
Spice Kits Great Value Here we go again – summer holidays, outdoor living, Christmas entertaining, the whole delightful summer experience. For your own use, as well as for giving, there are lots of our gift kits that are full of wonderful outdoor and barbecue ideas – Barbecue, Al Fresco, Quick and Tasty and Entertainer come immediately to mind. The kits are still great value at just $30.00 each
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NEWSLETTER: Autumn 2010
Just Add Spice Finally we have reached 2010, now perhaps we can start saying twenty-ten rather than two-thousand-and-ten. Surely we don’t have to spend the next 90 years saying two-thousand-and-something – after all, we all learned that the Battle of Hastings happened in ten-sixty-six, not one thousand and sixty-six.. Keep your eyes peeled for a new book, Just Add Spice , which will be out in
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NEWSLETTER: Autumn 2014
As the summer season draws to a close, we find ourselves contemplating seasonal menus. Naturally, seasons dictate the fruits and vegetables that appear on our tables, although worldwide trade of fresh produce ensures that we no longer have to wait for spring to find asparagus, or for summer to get our stone fruits. Looking beyond seasonal produce, we are in the habit of eating
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Low Calorie Eating Made Easy
Reducing Your Calorie Intake with a Touch of Spice In response to a number of Herbie’s Spices customers opting for healthier food choices, including those that are lower in calories, Kate Hemphill, daughter of Ian “Herbie’’ Hemphill and recipe contributor to the Spice & Herb Bible, has created a new selection of low calorie recipes. Ian’s wife Liz has worked her magic into a
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Simply Sumac
Sumac is one of the easiest to use and most agreeable of spices. Sumac trees (Rhus coriaria) grow wild in the Mediterranean region and are found in southern Italy and much of the Middle East, especially south-eastern Turkey and Iran. Sumac berries were used by the Romans, who referred to them as Syrian sumac. Lemons being unknown in Europe at that time, sumac was a
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Kaffir (Makrut) Lime Leaves
Why are we calling these ‘Makrut” Lime Leaves these days? “What’s in a name?” For many years this tree has been called a kaffir lime tree, as the fruits are rough and seen as inferior. Kaffir was a term used to denote inferior persons in the former South Africa and other nations involved in the slave trade. In some Asian countries the term means “non-believer”. This word
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We Need to Talk About Ras el Hanout and………
The way popularity can start a race to the bottom! Let me begin by sharing my thoughts on Pot-Pourri, a now devalued and bastardised item. Some history: When I was growing up in my parent’s herb & spice business in the 1960’s, I would earn pocket money helping my father harvest scented plants to make his classic Pot-Pourri. Pot-Pourri was a traditional blend of
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Herbie’s Newsletter Summer 2019 – 2020
We’re all in accord about single-use plastics. Having seen huge drifts of plastic in the pristine seas off the Indonesian islands, we know just how important it is to get rid of those shopping bags, plastic wraps and sandwich bags. When one gets emotional about bad plastics, it’s easy to begin to demonize all plastics, and perhaps it’s timely to repeat this message from our Newsletter of some years ago.
