Agri Masala: Spice Blend
Agri is a community in Maharashtra, usually involved in salt, fish or coconut processing business. The term 'Agri' hails from 'aagar' which means a plot of land or an area use to collect or store things. Salt pans are popularly known as 'mithaagar' in Marathi, which formed the primary source of income for this community. Traditionally, Agri food is known to be fiery hot. And this heat usually comes from their patent masala blend.
Traditionally this blend uses 3 different red chilies- Baydgi, Kashmiri and Sannam chili. I personally am not used to the original spiciness for this masala blend. Therefore, I included only Baydgi and Kashmiri chilies in my spice mix. Also, two other ingredients that could be added to make this even more authentic are: Tirphal or Teppal and Nagkesar. Teppal is the lesser known cousin of the famous Sichuan pepper. And Nagkesar is a traditional Maharashtrian spice, which is hard for me to source here in Canada.
So here goes my recipe:
Ingredients:
5 Baydgi chili
10 Kashmiri chili
1 tsp black peppercorns, whole
3" piece cinnamon
4 cloves
2 pieces mace, whole
1/4 cup Coriander seeds, whole
2 star anise, whole
2" piece stone flower/ dagad phool/ patthar ka phool
5 tirphal/ teppal
5 nagkesar
Method:
1. Dry toast the chilies together, followed by peppercorn, coriander, teppal and nagkesar.
2. Toast rest other spices together and let everything cool down. The spices should be aromatic when toasted on low heat for about 10 minutes.
3. In a dry spice blender, start with chilies and slowly add rest of the spices to form a powdered spice blend.
4. Store this spice blend in an air tight jar. It can be used to flavour meat currys, crustratian curries as well as several vegetarian dishes.
P.S: I had to skip Teppal and Nagkesar since I could not source them from our local Indian store.
