
Welcome!
Dear Friends,
The idea for creating our first products came up as a result of our passion to try dishes from different cultures and especially as a result of our attempts to cook them at home. The recent trends in Bulgaria gave us and additional incentive – we are convinced that modern urban people are much more tempted to experiment with exotic flavors, and in order to achieve the desired results they need quality spices. And finding quality spices is virtually mission impossible in Bulgaria.
The challenges we faced were the following:
- Most spices sold in Bulgaria are with extremely poor quality, unknown origin and age.
It is known that if not used in the first 3-4 years after their harvest, dried whole spices begin to lose much of their aroma and taste. Almost all of the spices sold in Bulgaria have stayed in warehouses over 5-6 years and a large part of them are with extracted essential oils and fragrances. In some cases the color extraction is corrected by dying the spices with food coloring to make them they attractive again. - Ground Spices and mixes often contain fillers and additives. It turned out that the difficult for non-industrial grinding spices like paprika and turmeric contain over 50% fillers – milled ceramics, alfalfa, ground limestone, etc. Additionally, almost all mixtures sold under the names curry, garam masala or grill rubs contain a lot of salt and additives, which in no way help for achieving the promised taste.
- Qualitative whole spices can be found in very few places in Bulgaria.
Import of spices in Bulgaria is entirely dependent on the needs of the meat industry, which consumes more than 80-85% of it. So if you try to buy whole spices to cook some exotic dish you can do it in only two or three stores in Sofia and one in Varna, where you must purchase a minimum of 5 to 20 grams of a kind. If you are trying to cook an Indian curry, for example, and you are lucky to find the 9-15 spices you need, you will have to pay around 30-40 BGN for spices that may not use again.
All those specifics of the spice trade in Bulgaria led us create our first series of products – spice kits for cooking of 4 portions, consisting of mostly whole spices, with guaranteed by us quality that can be easily visually verified.
We promote cooking with whole spices not only in an attempt to show their high quality, but also because cooking with whole or freshly ground spices guarantees the best results. All ground mixtures gradually lose their flavor in the first 1-2 months after grinding, even when correctly stored in a refrigerator in a tightly closed container. Each spice loses flavors with different speed and a ready made mixes has different flavour in the different periods of their storage. Therefore, we deeply believe that any mixture should be grounded immediately before use. In our kits we include ground spices when that are difficult to grind at home (such as turmeric, paprika or smoked paprika Pimenton).
An integral part of our product is the tested recipe (both in text and video format). We are convinced that if you follow it the authentic taste is guaranteed. We are not trying to adapt or modify the recipes for the Bulgarian taste. On the contrary, our goal is to offer authentic dishes that will please every food lover.
Real food is a result of real cooking with high quality products and spices.