We’re enjoying these spice blends - the easiest way to get a big hit of flavor with absolutely no effort.
Gullah/Geechee Seafood Boil Sack from Taste of Satira
Pamela D. Jones hails from the small South Carolina town of Cross, not too far from Charleston. She grew up in a world of Gullah/Geechee cooks and upon moving to Atlanta, built a catering and food business named after her great-grandmother Satira Gethers. Jones says her business is all about sharing traditions and flavors, following her grandmother’s mantra, “Let me love you with my food.” In addition to catering and providing chef services, Jones offers a small line of seasonings and fish fry batter. And she makes up bags of traditional Gullah/Geechee spices to make a perfect Low Country Boil. Each bag comes attractively packaged in a small burlap sack which makes us think, “hostess gifts.” The bags themselves are filled with more than 10 spices and herbs and just enough cayenne to give your seafood a little bit of heat. One bag will season up to four pounds of shrimp or crawfish or up to a dozen crabs. It’s a foolproof way to bring a taste of the Low Country to your dinner table.
$15 per sack. Use the code AJC for a 20 percent discount good through May 31. Available at tasteofsatira.com/.
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Tybee Island Coastal Blend from The Salt Table
We are really enjoying this Tybee Island Coastal Blend, a mix of Himalayan salt, peppercorns, mustard seed, garlic and lots more savory seasonings. We can understand why it was the 2015 Flavor of Georgia winner in the seasonings category. It’s really great on seafood (which makes the Tybee tie-in completely make sense) and we enjoyed it on shrimp and grouper. But we also liked it in our Easter deviled eggs, on steamed asparagus and yes, we went old school and used it to season a dish of cottage cheese. Carol and Dave Legasse opened their first Savannah shop in 2011, starting like many folks do with one delicious product that family and friends loved, and turning that into a thriving business. Now they sell over 260 flavors of salts, dips, seasoning blends and teas online and in their Savannah, Pooler and Jekyll Island shops. Another cool thing is that the grinder is refillable. This is a good thing because you’re going to be very sad when your little jar is empty. Check out the video on their website for the easy instructions for refilling.
$8.95 per 100-ml bottle, $4.95 per 2-ounce refill. Available online at salttable.com/.
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Garam Masala from Charleston Spice Company
Open a bottle of garam masala from Charleston Spice Company and the first thing you notice is how fresh it smells. No musty mixed blend of spices that have been sitting on the grocery shelf, this is a powerfully fragrant mix that immediately inspires ideas for dinner. One of the things we love is that there’s no mystery to the spice blend - coriander seed, cardamom seed, brown mustard seed, cumin, cassia cinnamon chips and more are all spelled out on the label. That’s really nice because there’s no one “recipe” for garam masala. It is a blend that’s personalized by the creator. Charleston Spice Company is based on James Island, just south of Charleston, and their dozens of spice blends are a work of love for Garnette Tuten and her daughter Caitlin. They sell dried herbs and spices as well. Tuten says her favorite way to use garam masala is on baked salmon, but we also tried it on sweet potatoes and in another way she suggests, on popcorn. Next we’re going to use it in more traditional Indian-style recipes like a curry with potatoes, carrots and fresh Georgia spring peas.
$8 per 2-ounce jar. Available online at https://www.charlestonspice.com/.
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