Topic: Hello

[RedwoodCurry]

Hello all curry lovers. I'm a newbie but love cooking curries and using a lot of chilies. I'm living in Humboldt County California though and it's hard to get all the spices and ingredients needed. So I'm always looking for good sources with decent shipping charges if anybody knows of any.
Thank you for a great website. Cheers

[Peripatetic Phil]

Hello all curry lovers. I'm a newbie but love cooking curries and using a lot of chilies. I'm living in Humboldt County California though and it's hard to get all the spices and ingredients needed. So I'm always looking for good sources with decent shipping charges if anybody knows of any.
Thank you for a great website. Cheers

Not going to be a great deal of help, I am afraid, RC : the nearest I have been to California while cooking curries is Waterloo in Ontario, and Waterloo has one of the greatest spice shops I know of; where you might find something similar near Humboldt County is probably not going to be easy for most of us to answer, and postal charges from the UK to America are going to be prohibitive (never mind any import requirements imposed by the FDA !).

** Phil.

[Malc.]

Hey Redwood,

I can't help on the spice front i'm afraid, but welcome to the forum.

[Stephen Lindsay]

Welcome to the forum RedwoodCurry!

[natterjak]

Hi RedwoodCurry, good to have you onboard.  Fraid I can't help with your ingredient-sourcing problems.  Surely in a country the size of the US there will be a specialist importer who offers this stuff though?

[Peripatetic Phil]

How about WholeSpice ?  They are California-based and offer a postal service.
** Phil.

[RedwoodCurry]

Thank you all for the warm welcome.
Thank you Phil for the link, I found the fenugreek leaves, but still have no source for Cassia bark.
The first base I made came real good without. I guess that's one of the great things about curry, there are so many other flavors going on I don't notice whats missing.

[Malc.]

but still have no source for Cassia bark.

You can use cinnamon stick in place of Cassia Bark. A More expensive solution but it will have a similar effect.

[JerryM]

You can use cinnamon stick in place of Cassia Bark.

this is something i'm still wrestling with. i thought a while ago cassia was king. cinnamon bark is now my clear fav. i have an empty bag of cinnamon sticks (200g) and almost untouched cassia (bought at same time).

i'm currently using cassia in the whole spice but on next batch going to leave it out again and test both batches side by side on some pillau rice (like the chips idea).

[Malc.]

Hi Jerry,

I'm still using Cassia and will continue to do so, mostly because this is what my beloved IG does. However, I have seriously changed the portion sizing on Cassia.

Where before I would portion in terms of a piece to be 1 inch square I now portion a piece to be at least half of this.