The Spice Kitchen: Everyday Cooking with Organic Spices [Hardcover]

Katie Luber (Author), Sara Engram (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 2009

The Spice Kitchen offers more than one hundred delicious recipes for using herbs and spices to add vibrant flavors to your food at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and any time in between. From Spiced Yogurt and Granola Parfaits, to Strawberry Salad with Cinnamon-Balsamic Vinaigrette, Spiced Guacamole, Tarragon Chicken Potpie, Clove Spiced Caramel Corn, and more, this exciting cookbook is full of inventive recipes, information, and tips for using herbs and spices. Best of all, the recipes are easy and fuss free--a must for busy home cooks who want to spend less time in the kitchen and more time at the family table. And with dozens of full-color photographs and illustrations, The Spice Kitchen is as beautiful as it is practical.

The Spice Kitchen changes everything, using herbs and spices to add special twists to favorite family recipes, from macaroni and cheese, to burgers, chicken salad, deviled eggs, and much more. It's the only all-purpose cookbook for spicing up everyday meals. Not just exotic extras, spices from around the world make it easier--and much more fun--to turn out delicious and healthy food. The simple but flavorful recipes and ideas in The Spice Kitchen will make old family favorites new again--and bring everyone to the table.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sara Engram and Katie Luber are the cofounders of The Seasoned Palate, Inc., based in Baltimore, Maryland. Their company specializes in packaging organic spices in one-teaspoon packets for convenience and freshness. Their tsp spices line is sold in more than three hundred retail stores in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and their Smart Spice brand is sold in supermarkets throughout the United States.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing (October 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0740779729
• ISBN-13: 978-0740779725
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #431,717 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #86 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Organic Cooking

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Spices 101, October 22, 2009

By 

Joe MacBu - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Spice Kitchen: Everyday Cooking with Organic Spices (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

The Spice Kitchen is a good introduction to the use of spice for those who have been timid of doing so. An apt description from the back cover is that this book is "a fresh new way to make everyday foods more delicious...."
Hence, most of the recipes consist of an already-familiar dish that has been jazzed up with the addition of one or few spices. I find this to be a good approach for those who are inexperienced in using spices. The chance of success is high, compared to something like a complex Indian curry. It also allows the novice to clearly taste the effect of the spice.

Some dishes that illustrate this approach include:
Curried Deviled Eggs with cumin, coriander and turmeric.
Popcorn spiced with Creole seasoning.
Caramel corn with cloves.
Cheeseburgers with ancho chile and lemon zest.
Potato salad with fennel seed and dill weed.

While there are a few recipes that include a more complex blend of spices (Jamaica Jerk Chicken, Tandoori Chicken Skewers with Curry Butter sauce), most recipes are fairly simple. For this reason, cooks already experienced with the use of spices will probably find this book a bit lacking.

The ultimate goal of this book was to provide ways to spice up simple daily home cooking, and it meets that goal. The book is also visually appealing and well-written. Combined with a rack of spices, it would make a good gift for less experienced cooks.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spice Up Your Meals, You'll be Glad You did, November 12, 2009

By 

Vesta Irene (the Pacific Northwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Spice Kitchen: Everyday Cooking with Organic Spices (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I've been cooking for a long time and I've cooked all over the world as I've lived a lot of places. I understand and love Spanish, French, Indonesian, Chinese, Japanese, Cajun and a host of other different kinds of food. And I understand spices.

Or at least I thought I did, until I read the introduction to this book. The authors give you a very informative history of spice and they do it without making it dry. It was actually a very enjoyable read. From the intro they go into the properties of various spices and I was as absorbed as I've ever been in a novel. I learned much, it was fun and, as I said, I pretty much thought I had my spices down.

Then come the recipes. Good ones. Right of the bat I learned a new way to spice up oatmeal and that alone, for me, makes this book worthwhile, because my husband hate oatmeal and I've got him eating it now. If you're looking for a way to spice up you cooking, this is the book for you.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Give me a Penzeys catalog please, November 24, 2009

By 

J. Offenbach (N VA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Spice Kitchen: Everyday Cooking with Organic Spices (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

the spice kitchen: everyday cooking with organic spices was not a cheap book to produce and I'm sure the authors had a grand time coming up with the catchy adjectives for each spice they describe in the opening chapter in addition to the little recipes which fill a lot of pages. Unfortunately, the recipes in the book were less than robust and, had I been searching the shelves of a B&M store for a book on spices, I would have passed this one by. My culinary skills and tastes were more stimulated by reading a Penzeys Spices catalog. For a novice in the kitchen or a person who is first venturing into the spice arena, I was going to suggest this book, but after spending some more time online reviewing the catalog and specifically the information on the spices covered in this book, I once again would select the catalog. I've prepared two of the recipes and found them to be fine, but not extraordinary. The Butternut Squash and Sage Risotto was made with vegetable broth, DeCecco Carnaroli rice and fresh organic sage. It was not excellent, but was okay and not unlike other risottos I've prepared in the past. The Pumpkin Spice-Chocolate Chip Muffins also were fine but nothing special, even when consumed with Chai. I wish I liked the book more, but it's an average cookbook with high production values containing average recipes and images.