There’s a lot to be said for convenience when it does not reduce quality. And in your kitchen your customers (family & friends) demand and deserve a quality meal. So let’s say you decided to make them a Tagine (also spelled Tajine), a Moroccan dish that is very complexly flavored.
The basics of a Tagine are simple: some lamb stewing meat, a few carrots and onions, a bit of stock and then the hard part… Ras al Hanout; a spice blend that, when done right has a lot of different spices and herbs. Our Tagine Blend has more than 20 herbs and spices (most commercial blends have only four or five) and results in a genuine, richly complex Tagine that completely fills the house with an extraordinary fragrance and tastes superb.
So to make a good Tagine for your family completely “from scratch” you’d need to buy about 20 jars of spices ($60-$80), carefully measure each ingredient (time), and then realize that most of the remaining spices will expire before you use them again. This makes for an expensive and really inconvenient meal.
Or… buy one jar of Chef Nick’s Tagine Blend, fluff it up and put two tablespoons of it in the crock pot and you’re done. You’ve now taken your family on an exotic dinner adventure that is every bit as good as that in the best restaurants of Casablanca. Don’t forget, at some point during dinner, use your best Boggy imitation and say “of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she has to walk into mine.”