How Much Ready Prepared Panchphoran Spice Mix Should I Use For The Panchphoran Aloo?

Our answer

Nigella's recipe for Panchphoran Aloo (from HOW TO EAT) cooks cubes of potatoes in a spice mixture of turmeric plus fennel, mustard, fenugreek, cumin and Nigella seeds. The potatoes make an interesting side dish for many different meals.

Panchphonran is a Bengali whole spice mix that contains five of the same spices - Nigella, cumin, fennel, fenugreek and mustard. Quite often the store-bought mixes contain equal quantities of these spices, so we suspect that you can use 2½ teaspoons of a ready-made panchphoran mix instead of the fennel, mustard, fenugreek, cumin and Nigella seeds and add a ½ teaspoon of ground turmeric to this mixture to make the dish.