Nothing. Oh, I found a couple specialised spice lists for things like Indian or Chinese cooking, but nothing that came close to what I was looking for. This time, even Martha had failed me. So I turned to my next most valuable source, The Joy of Cooking.
While Joy lacked a definitive guide as well, it did list a whole lot of spices, what they were like and how they were commonly used. Damn! I was going to have to think for myself. Here, then is the list that I came up with.
We started with the following in the cupboard: pepper, salt, Chinese and Japanese pepper, lemon pepper, Japanese chili pepper, garlic salt, cinnamon, dill weed, paprika, nutmeg and basil. Working from that, I built my list.
List in hand, I strolled over to Rainbow and bought the following: cayenne pepper, chili powder, cumin, fennel, garam masala, mustard powder, parsley, thyme and tumeric. I also picked out a small vial of saffron stigma. Rainbow is great because they have a huge selection of organic spices, all in these giant jars. I selected the mid-range cayenne pepper (60,000HU), although they had a hotter (80kHU) and a more mild (40kHU). They did not have the black cumin seed I was looking for, but I knew it would be hard to find.
After all of that, I am left with three empty containers. Any suggestions?