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Why spices from Papua New Guinea?
PNG provides some of the best conditions for growing spices. Why is this the case and how can you use PNG-grown spices in your recipes.
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Newsletter Summer 2016/2017
Cook's Vacation Summer is traditionally holiday time, although of course the business of feeding ourselves continues regardless of school holidays and days off from work. The question is: how can the cook of the family get a break? We’ve given it some thought, and the trusty barbecue seems the way to spread the load and minimize the effort. So, to make it as easy
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Newsletter Summer 2015 – 2016
Low Calorie Spice Kit As we head towards yet another Olympic year, it might be a good time to think about fitness. Not elite fitness in our case, we hasten to add, but a level of well-being that makes life enjoyable. Christmas is notoriously the weight-gain season, with those Christmas party nibbles, irresistible cheese platters and calorie-rich sparkling wine, along with our feeling that
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How Long Will My Spices Last in the Pantry?
We are often asked about how long spices will last, which is why we’re here with some tips about how to preserve the flavour of your spices.
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10 Family Friendly Spice Blends
We’ve put together a list of 10 of our most popular spice blends that are family friendly, which of your favourites made the cut?
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Why Herbie’s Vanilla Bean Paste?
For many years Herbie has been frustrated with the inability to source a really good Vanilla Bean Paste. Why is this so? Most vanilla bean pastes are made up of: spent vanilla (that’s the organic material left over after the process of making vanilla extract) sugar syrup various thickeners vanilla extract in alcohol added back in for flavour. These products contain a very small
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New Slow-Cooking Spice Kit from Herbie’s Spices
Herbie’s Spice Kits remain as popular as ever, partly because nearly every kit has been inspired by suggestions from our customers. With this in mind, we turned to social media and asked our followers to come up with their own suggestions as to what they’d like to see us make up next. As an incentive, we promised the sender of the kit idea we chose,
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For the Love of Cardamom!
In January 1997, Liz and I spent a month in Cochin, South India to take a Spice Sabbatical in preparation for opening Herbie’s Spices on the 7th of July 1997 – 20 years ago. Cardamom remains one of my favourite spices, therefore it seems appropriate to share this experience with you, one that I wrote about in my book Spice Travels that was published in 2001.
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Newsletter Winter 2017
July 7th this year marks 20 years since we opened the doors of Herbie’s Spices in Rozelle. What amazing, fulfilling, exciting years they have been, and we wouldn’t have missed a minute of it! Our decision last year to close the retail store in Rozelle was the right move at the right time, and you all know that we are still here, still meeting your spice requirements,
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WHAT IS ACHIOTE?
WHAT IS ACHIOTE? Achiote is another name for annatto seeds, (Bixa orellana) and achiote paste is the Mexican condiment that gets its main flavour from annatto seeds. So what are annatto seeds? Annatto seeds are collected from a relatively small tropical evergreen tree that grows 5–10 m high. The leaves are heart-shaped, glossy and provide an attractive background to the large bright pink flowers, which have the
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Is Cassia Really Cinnamon?
Yes! Cassia is a variety of cinnamon as previously explained in our “Cinnamon Facts” Blog. Chinese cassia, Batavia or Indonesian cassia, and Saigon or Vietnamese cassia are harvested in a different manner from Sri Lankan cinnamon. Various cassia botanical names are (Cinnamomum cassia, C. burmannii, C. lourerii and C. tamala) and many years ago was called Saigon Cinnamon in the USA, and Dutch Cinnamon, Baker’s Cinnamon, Bastard Cinnamon and
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Newsletter Summer 2018 – 2019
NEWSLETTER SUMMER 2018-19 Food safety … food security … everyone hears the term, but unless you’re in the industry, you don’t quite know what it means. So let us fill you in on just what is involved in keeping your herbs and spices the way you want them to be. Certification by HACCP is the first step. The letters stand for Hazard Analysis Critical
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