exotic spices, gourmet salt, peppercorns

We had fun checking out what else (aside from ethnic gadgets) Buck's Fifth Avenue has to offer dedicated food enthusiasts. Aside from the gadgets, there were many interesting spices and ingredients that caught my husband's attention and was curious to try (shown below). We look forward to using them in our daily meals.

1. An interesting mix of hot and spicy peppers labeled Taste the Pain for the adventurous and definitely for those who would like a taste of powdered hot chili peppers and can tolerate their heat on an extreme level. Inside the cute packaging are seven kinds in tiny reusable aluminum containers. In the sampler set, there's chipotle pepper, birdseye chili, hot paprika, jalapeno, cayenne, African bird chili and habanero pepper.

2. A collection of salt and pepper packaged in small reusable aluminum containers. The salt sampler consists of ten varieties, Murray river, Viking smoked, Bolivian rose, Cyprus black lava, Hawaiian black, Hawaiian red, Indian black, bacon salt, fleur de sel and esprit de sel. Sounds so exotic and full of flavor. The peppercorn sampler includes grains of paradise, smoked black, 6 peppercorn variety, lemon, white, cubeb berry, tellicherry, garlic, green and long pepper. More info about salt here and peppercorns here.

3. The covered round container is made of good quality stainless steel, which can be reused as food storage or containers. Inside are samples of different spices that are great for Indian cuisine, rich curries and other flavorful ethnic dishes.

4. This photo shows the labeled containers of the spices inside the stainless storage box in #3. They are saffron, black mustard, cumin, poppyseed, black cumin, asafedita, amchur, fenugreek, ajwan, coriander, black cardamom, kalonji, ground cardamom and turmeric. I have never heard of some of these spices, so I still need to research and read about them. I think I've found an informative website here.