The Craft of Flavour

I’m often asked why we feature food and drink on The Artisan Founder (not everyone sees food products as a craft), yet personally I find myself more inspired by the alchemy, and admittedly the taste, of a craft gin or perfectly baked sourdough loaf than I do for example, of something hand-assembled from synthetic materials.

There’s art, there’s handmade, and there’s craftsmanship. And while products can span definitions, it’s my opinion that true craftsmanship is the ability to take raw materials from the land and, through knowledge, care and skill, transform them into something new. For me it is the wood shaped into a chair; willow woven into baskets, silver and stone into jewellery, herbs into tinctures, soaps and balms and so on.

In the case of the Spice Kitchen feasting kit, the craft is contained in four small tins of carefully balanced masalas, each containing many individual herbs & spices and a product of deep knowledge and years of experimentation to get the blends just right. I think this skill can so often be overlooked in the world of artisan food & drink, but go to any artisan food market and you’ll find makers happy to tell you all about their extensive development phase.

Over at Spice Kitchen, a conversation between mother and son founders Shashi and Sanjay Aggarwal about gifting a spice-filled masala dabba one Christmas, has grown into a small but thoughtful collection of blends, inspired by street food and global flavours. Each blend in the kit I tried from Jerk to Tandoori, Cajun to Piri Piri, reflects meticulous attention to proportion, heat, and aroma.

“What started with our Indian Spice Tin has grown into a range to suit every budding cook and budget,” says Sanjay. “From the chilli heads and curry-obsessed, to someone falling in love with Middle Eastern cooking, we wanted to make spices accessible but also celebratory.”

Using the kit, I was struck by how intuitive the recipes felt. Wedges of cauliflower, tossed and roasted in masala, tasted as if they had been prepared in a professional kitchen. Like anything crafted with experience and knowledge, it seems effortlessly beautiful to the end user.

These little tins of delight are now stowed away in my spice drawers, ready to fill the kitchen with their heavenly scent again very soon.