Pantry Essentials & Hollywood Pork – 9 Questions With The Spice Merchant

As a part of my own food dedication & occasional trial by misadventure, I have an extensive collection of seasonings in my kitchen that I regularly experiment with. I recently ran out of some spectacular chiles that a friend had brought me back from Turkey. My quest to replenish was met with dead ends until I found Aleppo Chiles online from The Silk Road Spice Merchant, a Canadian website and family owned business based in Calgary. Much to my delight, the chiles were exactly what I was searching for, and I discovered new inclusions for my pantry along the way.

I recently caught up with Colin Leach & Kelci Hind, proprietors of The Silk Road and asked them a few questions about how they got their start, what every kitchen should have, hot food trends and they also share a favourite recipe for our readers. These two are some skilled folks, not only offering fine spices, herbs and other seasoning necessities, they also create all their own spice blends and rubs by hand in what must be fragrantly awesome small batches. I love a Canadian small business finding niches in the market…find them online at http://www.silkroadspices.ca/

Have you two always been interested in cooking? Or did you rock the ramen noodles in University?

Colin: A little of both, I guess. I still love ramen noodles, only now I put things like miso, chick peas and vegetables in them. Or curry paste.

I got interested in cooking by watching The Urban Peasant (Vancouver!) in university. He taught me to get a good knife and a good pan and learn how to improvise. He was never about following recipes exactly.

Kelci: I’ve been baking since I was a kid, but my cooking repertoire consisted of about 10 dishes until I was in my mid-twenties. I grew up in a meat and potatoes family, so it took me a long time to get out of my comfort zone and be a bit more adventurous with ingredients. Indian cuisine was a revelation for me, and the love affair with spices soon followed.

What inspired you to start Silk Road?

A couple of things. On the practical side, we wanted to fill a niche – for a single place that people can go for every spice under the sun, even if they live somewhere rural. As it stands now, you have to go to 10 different places to get this stuff, depending on whether you’re cooking Indian, Mexican, Thai or whatever. And people in smaller towns often have no access to those things at all.

On a more visceral side, we really just love spices. The colours, the smells, the textures, and of course the flavours. And the blending. It’s like mixing pigments for a fresco or combining strange ingredients for a perfume. It’s fun.

What annoys you most about typical generically produced/store bought spices?

They are incredibly overpriced and all the blends contain way too much salt (not to mention MSG). Plus most stores don’t stock anything outside of the basics. And you have to question the freshness of anything mass-produced that is sitting on supermarket shelves.

What sets you apart from them?

We have better quality, better freshness, better selection and better prices. And we’re really knowledgeable about our products. There’s tons of information on our website, and we’re happy to answer customer questions about spices, whether it be how to use them, what they taste like, or what spices go well with different types of food.

What are the absolute pantry essentials every cook should have?

For spices, there are 10 or 15 things you have to have. Coarse or kosher salt, black peppercorns, cayenne pepper, cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, ancho chiles, garlic powder. That’s 16. With those basic building blocks, you can do almost anything, including spice blends like chili powder and simple curry powders.

Any new trends you’ve spotted for cooking ingredients?

Fennel pollen is the biggest one lately, since it only became available in North America recently. It’s a really neat spice with a totally unusual flavour and the ability to enhance almost anything.

But in a broader context, there’s an encouraging trend towards embracing high-quality spices and things that used to be pretty uncommon. We’re seeing a lot of people buying whole dried chiles, citrus zest, vanilla beans – the kind of things that used to be reserved for “fancy” kitchens or chefs.

People are so much more knowledgeable about food now. The Food Network, food blogs and celebrity chefs have sparked a bit of a food revolution, and now the average home cook is willing to try adventurous recipes. And they want good ingredients. If you’ve gone out and spent a bunch of money on good meat and vegetables, it doesn’t make sense to cook them with stale or sub-par spices. We’re so happy that people are catching on to that, and we think that using good spices and making more spice blends at home could definitely become a big trend.

Do you have a favourite place to eat in Vancouver?

The Reef, Go Fish, Gyoza King, and for spices, you can’t do any better than Vij’s.

What’s next for Silk Road? World domination?

We’ll settle for Western-Canadian domination. A shop in Calgary in the next 6 months, and if all goes well, we’d like to expand to Vancouver in a couple of years.

Can you share a favourite recipe that you are rocking in your home kitchen?

This recipe is one we make a lot. It’s a slow-cooked pork dish from Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. Easy, spicy and full of unusual flavours. It’s basically like a Mexican pulled pork: you can serve it on rice or make sandwiches out of it. This particular recipe is adapted somewhat from one by Robert Rodriguez, who loves this dish so much that it featured prominently in his movie Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Puerco Pibil

Preheat oven to 325°

Ingredients:

4-5 lbs pork butt (this is a shoulder roast, available from any good butcher)

5 tbsp annatto seeds

1 tbsp black peppercorns

2 tsp cumin seeds

½ tsp whole cloves

8 allspice berries

3 dried habanero chiles

8 cloves garlic

2 tbsp salt

½ cup orange juice

½ cup white vinegar

Juice of 2 lemons and 3 limes

2 ounces tequila

Grind spices and chiles to a powder in a spice or coffee grinder. Whiz together spices, salt, garlic and liquids in a blender.

Two cautions:

1. Annatto is a natural dye, so don’t get any on your clothes and wipe up any spills quickly.
2. Be very careful when working with habanero chiles. Don’t touch them any more than you have to. And then wash your hands. Seriously.

Cut the pork into rough 3” cubes and put it in a large zip-lock bag. Pour in the marinade. Marinate at least 4 hours (overnight is best). Put the whole lot in a slow cooker and cook for 8-10 hours on low. When cooked, remove the pork to a large plate and shred with 2 forks, removing any remaining fat.

Pour liquid into a saucepan and reduce on the stove by about half. Add shredded pork, stir and heat through. Serve on Mexican rice with sliced raw onions and peppers.

If you don’t have a slow cooker, you can use the oven. Line a large glass baking pan with foil. Pour in meat and liquid and seal the whole pan with foil. Bake for 4 hours at 325°F. Line the bottom of the oven with foil to catch any drips.