Did you know that shop-bought spice mixes often contain gluten which is not always listed on the packet?  Anyway that’s only really relevant for you gluten-sensitive people out there.

Once you taste this beautiful five spice powder in your stir fries, sprinkled on salmon before grilling, or in a home made hotpot you will never want to go back to commercial, tasteless five spice.  Do keep your spices in airtight glass jars somewhere dark.  Left in the sun, they lose their marvelous antioxidant potency and their taste too.  All spices have hundreds (and some thousand) of peer-reviewed clinical research papers showing various health benefits.  When you cook food with spices the food generates fewer toxic by-products (e.g. from grilling, sauteeing or roasting) and the spices stimulate your body’s own antioxidant defences.

1 dsp (dessertspoon) ground Ceylon cinnamon
1 dsp ground cloves
1 dsp fennel seed, ground
1 dsp ground star anise
1 teaspoon Szechuan peppercorns, ground
Electric coffee grinder or spice grinder

1.Grind your fennel, star anise and peppercorns.
2.Mix the spices together and store in an airtight jar somewhere dark.