These totally gorgeous spices were sent to us by Mettalife, an E-commerce Ethical and Vegan Marketplace, the perfect place to shop this Christmas and to support small business. The spices make up part of a Vegan Spices Recipe Gift Box from The Teaspoon Club. It comes complete with various recipes and all the spices and spice mixes needed to make them.

The Teaspoon Club’s ethically sourced spices are exceptionally high quality, the flavours that come through are rich and strong and far superior to the wee jars obtained in supermarkets. They also arrive in compostable packaging.

Mettalife have given us a code for you to use for purchases from their site. Just use FAMILY10 for a 10% discount.

The Butternut Squash Curry with Coconut recipe that came with the kit sounded absolutely delicious, but as we’re not the best recipe followers, we made our own inspired by it and will leave theirs to purchasers or receivers of the gift box 🙂 Here’s our Butternut Squash Curry, using the provided spice mix:

Ingredients:

• Coconut oil, 1 tablespoon
• spice mix of coriander seeds, cumin seeds, fennel seeds and yellow mustard seeds, 1 tablespoon
• nigella seeds, 1 teaspoon
• ground cumin, 1 teaspoon
• ground turmeric, 1 teaspoon
• ground fenugreek, 1 teaspoon
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 apple, peeled, cored, diced
• 1 yellow pepper, diced
• 1 bag of frozen butternut squash, 500g, or a fresh one, peeled and chopped
• 1 tin of coconut milk
• water as needed
• 1 and a half cups of frozen peas
• salt to taste

Method: pound the seeds up in a pestle and mortar if you have, otherwise skip this step. Fry the seeds, spices, onion, garlic, apple and pepper in the oil for a few minutes before adding the squash and the coconut milk. Bring to the boil and turn down to simmer until almost cooked (about 20 minutes). Add the peas for a further 10 minutes of cooking and salt to taste.

This was so delicious we’re really looking forward to using the Chilli Spice Mix next!

See all our recipes here and our Vegan Christmas section here.