Penzey’s spice shop is at Oak Park towards the end of the Green Line near Harlem. It is a big store filled with rows and rows, of spice bottles and shelf after shelf containing spices grouped by type. I liked the layout as it is clean and easy to navigate around.

Each spice or spice mix section has sample bottles that you can smell or taste the mixes from. In the Indian Spice section was a bottle of “Maharajah Style Curry Mix”. This had the best aroma and smell of all the mixes so I had to get a small bottle to try this one out in some home cooking recipe.

This spice mix was described as being “Hand-mixed from: turmeric, coriander, cumin, cardamom, fenugreek, ginger,nutmeg, fennel, cinnamon, white pepper, black pepper, cloves, red pepper and saffron”

and as “The highest quality curry powder, perfect for special meals. Maharajah is sweet, but not hot, with fragrant cardamom and a full pound of the rare jewel of all spices, saffron, in every 100 lbs. of curry powder. Maharajah adds glorious color and incomparable flavor to chicken and seafood curries”

I will let you know if it lives up to expectations once I have used it. Going completely off track with this, it reminded me of one of my early days in India when we ended up in a Western food court and outside a McDonalds, where they were selling a Chicken Mharaja Mac, which was like their equivalent of a Big Mac for about 60 rupees. I did wonder as I stood at Penzey’s sniffing the bottle if this was the same curry mix as was in that Indian food court offering.

“Just for Kris I am posting a picture of that first meal he ate in Hyderabad”

OK so back to Penzey’s. It transpires that they have shops all over the country, these can be located via their website: http://www.penzeys.com. This particular one was up at Oak Street / Harlem at the end of the Green Line