Tunisian Tabil

Quatre épices, berbere, dukkah, baharat, paanch phoron, ras el hanout, Chinese five spice, evencurry…distilling a host of spices into a mix that’s easy to use and embodies the true flavors of a cuisine. Tunisia’s version is called tabil, a word that loosely refers to “seasoning” in Arabic but has now come to mean this coriander-heavy spice blend.

Tabil includes a fragrant blend of (at its most) coriander, caraway, anise, fennel, garlic, red pepper, black pepper, cumin, clove and turmeric, and (oftentimes) some subjective subset of those spices. To mimic the Tunisian sun, homemade versions rely on dry roasting the spices before combining. The blend is used in stews, to flavor meat, poultry, stuffings, soups and vegetables and, besides harissa, is a foundational ingredient in Tunisian cooking.

The first time I tasted tabil, I went straight to the kitchen and made pork meatballs heavily seasoned with it. Amazing. The licorice-y fennel and anise bring out all that’s best in the pork. I also love it with winter or summer squash, sweet root veggies, and to enhance your basic oven-roasted potatoes. On the lighter end, a beautiful mixed green salad with toasted pistachios or pinenuts and citrus work beautifully with a salad dressing using tabil as the base.

There are so many imaginative ways to work in this spice, and although you can grind it to powder form, I’m a fan of leaving it a bit coarsely ground. I love when a red pepper flake or bit of caraway lingers a touch longer after a bite.

Egyptian Dukkah

If you’ve been following this blog at all you know (and for those who haven’t, here’s the rub…), I love when traditions, spices/spice blends or ingredients from other cultures make that easy transition across into our own. Something translatable, that takes foods we know and love to another level.

I am passionate about culturally unique specialties, and Egyptian dukkah is just that – a warm spice blend of sorts that includes the bonus of roasted nuts. It’s actually quite close to a West African tradition called tsire, another blend of nuts and spices (which I’ll have to write about soon) and is eaten in Egyptian culture much like za’atar is in other ones, with bread and a little olive oil.

Dukkah starts with a base of roasted nuts – usually hazelnuts but sometimes pistachios, almonds or cashews. To that, sesame seeds, coriander seeds, and cumin are added and occasionally even dried roasted chickpeas. Other spices might include black or red pepper, fennel, nigella seeds or caraway and, for herbs, mint, marjoram or thyme. A touch of salt, perhaps some sugar, a bit of pounding with a mortar and pestle (or, gasp, a spice grinder) and you have an incredibly textural, nutty blend that can top everything from bread to salads to pastas (how ridiculous would it be on top of pumpkin ravioli?!?).

Egyptians also eat dukkah with eggs, which is genius, because it’s the perfect topper for a simple Sunday scramble. I do love it on your basic mixed greens with a little balsamic and olive oil and can’t get enough of blending it with panko for breading chicken, fish or even lamb. I’m thinking my next experiment will be a little sweet potato hash with bacon and a sprinkling of this stuff…

Vadouvan, A French-Indian Curry Powder

Curry, to me, has always been something rather magical. My mom would throw down in the kitchen growing up, and, whenever she was making a curry, she would take out her spice daaba, a circular box that housed little cylinders within, holding tons of different spices. It was so mysterious to me at the time, the process of making a curry intimate, subjective, artful. She decided how much of one spice versus another – cumin, coriander, fenugreek – went into the specific curry. Tailored flavors.

For this reason, I pretty much never use pre-fab curry powders as I’ve mentioned in the past. EXCEPT, and this is a big one, when it comes to Vadouvan, a French-Indian style curry powder. Some believe the spice blend is from the Pondicherry region in South India where there’s a ton of French colonial influences. That’s unconfirmed, though, and vadouvan has popped up as a gourmet spice du jour here as well as in Europe.

Now, it’s not like you couldn’t also make this one on your own, but there are so many spices and quite a process involved. Garlic, shallots and onions give it a rounder flavor, ingredients like turmeric, fenugreek, cumin and coriander the signature curry flavor, curry leaves a delicious earthiness, and fennel seeds that licorice-like sweetness. To name a few….The spices are toasted before grinding and, in some, the onions/shallots fried before granulating. The result is a complex spice blend that is warm, a bit sweet, and a touch smoky.

The toasting of the spices takes away a lot of that raw flavor, so it’s good to go straight into yoghurt or an aioli to add incredible flavor. I love it as a dry rub on fish that I sear and finish with a bit of butter. Cooked up with onions and garlic, it’s delicious as a soup base for butternut squash or most other root veggies. I’m on a pot pie kick lately and have been debating throwing it into the mix for my next one. This blend is so versatile.

And, just for kicks, a picture of one of my dogs trying to get a little spice in her life…

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Tunisian Tabil

Egyptian Dukkah

Vadouvan, A French-Indian Curry Powder