This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.
Nimmy Philips came to Juneau as an engineer, but three years ago, she decided to buy a restaurant. Now, she applies her engineer’s precision to her recipes. One part of that attention to detail: all the spices are ordered whole and then roasted, mixed, and ground by hand.
Enrique Cabrera is her head chef. He shared how he grinds the spices that go in just about every dish.
Listen:
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Nimmy Philips: I’m Nimmy, I own the Spice restaurant and Spice Cafe and art gallery.
So opening up a restaurant or owning a restaurant has been my dream since I was in, I would say tenth grade or even in high school, mainly because a lot of people don’t understand how food connects each other. It doesn’t matter what culture you’re from, what religion, what color your skin is, it doesn’t matter. Food connects people. That’s the same language that we all speak when we eat the good food. And that’s something I wanted to do.
And I am one of those restaurant owners that, I’m not going to cut costs or take shortcuts to make a dish happen. I have to follow my grandmother’s recipes. My food feelings come from my grandmother. Going back to my grandmother’s house and spending time with her in the summertime, and she only spoke one language. And all her grandkids are well educated and have traveled all over the world. They all come in the summer to visit her and stay with her. The only language she spoke was food. And she showed care and love — support — through her food. And that’s what I want to do for Juneau.
And most of our family recipes call for like secret ingredients that we cannot get in Juneau, Alaska or anywhere down south. So when I go to India, I have to bring it with me.
And if I’m going to make something that is from my family recipe, I’m not going to put on something just to say that I did it. I have to be proud of it. I have to have my 150% effort into it.
And again, this is not just me doing it either. I have an amazing team. If I don’t have an amazing team to back me up, who believes in me, who supports me — otherwise I’m nothing. There’s no me without my group of people, without my Spice team. And my spices.
Spices come from the northern part of India. It comes through Seattle. We have a partnership with a store in Seattle that, whenever they do the Indian shipping from India, we put in our orders, too, and we get the spices through them. And they put it on the barge and we get it here. And we get them all whole spices. We grind our own spices.
Garam masala is the mix of masala. Masala just means a mix of spices together — that’s all it is. Garam means warm, it gives the life, the warmth to the dish.
Enrique Cabrera: I really enjoyed making the garam masala because you get to see all the spices and you put them together, and you roast them. And when you roast them, the smell of the cloves — that’s one of my favorites.
My name is Enrique ,and everybody calls me Kiké here at Spice. And I’m the head chef in charge in the kitchen and enjoy the work that I do here.
Okay, so let me get my container thing and I’m gonna start getting the recipe together. Coriander seeds, bay leaves, so we’ve got cloves, black pepper, cinnamon. Green cardamom, black cardamom.
One more, we’re gonna one more — Jeera — which is in the kitchen. I’m gonna go get it. Jeera, which is cumin seeds. I’m gonna roast the coriander seeds and the bay leaves and the cloves, and we have star anise to get roasted all over.
Okay, let’s see what’s next. I’m gonna put them all in there and and then I’m gonna mix it, and then I will grind them.
Now you’re gonna smell all the spice together in one smell. This is the easy part, grinding it.
Nimmy Philips: As you can see, we store them either in the container that comes in or sealed containers. We believe every spice has a soul. And that’s something Kerala Indian families believe, we believe that every spice has a soul. You leave the window open and the soul will fly out. I always tell Kiké, you know, “Cover it! The soul is running away! Cover it!”
Enrique Cabrera: At the beginning!
Nimmy Philips: At the beginning. Now Kiké tells me “Cover it!”
