If the busy storefront windows at Sahadi’s, on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, don’t appeal to your minimalist leanings, just get over it. You’re going to love this place, even if it takes you years to try all the products. The narrow aisles form a sort of labyrinth through the cramped space, where at every turn you’ll discover bins and jars of dried fruits and nuts or refrigerator cases full of cheeses. This is the place to buy anything you could ever want to eat from the Middle East, along with a healthy dose of European specialty goods.

When I asked the man in charge of the olive bar how many varieties he sold, he did some quick mental math and came up with an estimate.

“Thirty-four?” he said as he scooped a heap of shriveled, oily, black, Moroccan olives into a plastic container. more…

In Indian cooking the combinations of spices are often what make the dish.  The word masala translates to a blend of aromatic spices.  The cookbook Classic Indian Cooking says that garam masala is the most important of all of the spice blends.  It is possible to do the leg work and make the masala ones self, but much easier to find a spice store that carries these ingredients already blended together.  At Dual Specialty Store on 1st Avenue in the East Village, they have the entire gamut of spices, dried beans, dried fuits, nuts, rices and chutneys someone would need to make any Indian dish.

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Garam masala in a blend of cardamom pods, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, cumin seeds and coriander seeds. For recipes that use garam masala or other masalas, check out Sailus Kitchen, an food blog on Indian recipes, Andhra food and flavors from around the world.

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