I recently received some free samples of Indian spices from Spicemode which I passed on to my Indian-food-loving daughter for her evaluation.

She tells me she tried two recipes from Spicemode’s website: Madras Sweet Potato + Spinach and Mattar Paneer. Her verdict was they turned out well, although not as flavorful as she was expecting. Using the prepared mixes was easier than creating the dishes from scratch, she notes, so that’s the tradeoff. When you cook from scratch you can adjust the flavor to any extreme you like.

That considered, she called the Spicemode spices and ingredients “pretty good” and an easier way to make the dishes than starting from scratch.

Here’s a picture of how hers turned out. She mentions that she didn’t have the marsala sauce called for in one recipe and so substituted vindaloo sauce. Indian food aficionados will understand what that means, I hope.

My wife, who studied Indian cooking in London years before I met her, also kept some of the Spciemode offerings. When she creates a recipe with those, we’ll post about it too.