Recent Blog Posts
A Spicy Guide to New Mexican Cuisine
Southwestern cuisine is a blend of Mexican, Native American, and cowboy influences. Stretching from California in the west to Texas in the east, south to Arizona and to Colorado all the way in the north, this cuisine gives the country some of its spiciest foods. Southwestern food is well known for its use of regionally grown foods coupled with a huge use of spies, herbs, and chiles. It is widely considered the biggest and best cuisine across the United States. One of its sub-cuisines is New Mexican, a legend on its own with influences from Pueblo Native American, Spanish, and Mexican cuisines.
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Spices and Seasonings of Vietnam
Compared to other cuisines, Vietnamese food is underrepresented in the American gastronomy, but this is unfair to an elaborately flavorful cuisine that also is one of the healthiest in the world. It focuses heavily on fresh ingredients, with few added fats, oils, or butters. Herbs and spices are selected carefully to optimize the five basic flavors of this cuisine - sweet, sour, bitter, spicy, and salty. Practiced over centuries, the art of combining these flavors has been mastered and passed down, leaving modern Vietnamese chefs with the knowledge to cook intricate traditional meals and the expertise to discover new ways in which the basic elements of Vietnamese cuisine work. This is where spices come in.
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Spice Cabinet 101: Ground Mustard and Mustard Seeds
Somewhere in the fierce summer heat, a child is experiencing mustard for the first time. Perhaps it is on a messy hotdog at a barbecue or on a fingertip, curiously scooped up by said child to put in their mouth. This child either loves or hates the mustard. Mustard is no longer just the neon yellow condiment you find at barbecues, it is a food item that has countless varieties with callbacks to the original mustards of times long ago. Look around at your local grocery store and you are likely to find at least ten different varieties of mustard.
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