During the 23rd annual Les Dames d’Escoffier annual conference in Philadelphia in October, I took a wonderful seminar with my buddy, and Philadelphia Dame and chef extraordinaire,  Aliza Green at the venerable Reading Terminal Market in downtown.

Here’s a photo of some of the unusual spices she described, then cooked with.

The workshop so inspired me that I rushed back to Seattle and went to World Spice Merchants (along Western Avenue, just below the Pike Place Market) and MarketSpice (a venerable Pike Place Market shop that’s been in business since 1911!) to restock my spice rack.

I loved the way at World Spice Merchants that they ground my Kashmiri garam masala (an Indian spice blend), right before my eyes. It’s also neat because they offer five different blends of garam to choose from and you can smell them and compare prices before you buy them!

Also at World Spice, I bought an ounce of Aleppo Pepper, a warm, chocolate-y, chipotle-like pepper with a moist texture. It’s so special, I’ve been sprinkling it over scrambled eggs, soups and stews, and just about everything.

Still on a spice jag, instead of preparing the traditional Thanksgiving turkey this year, I made Madhur Jaffrey’s Silken Chicken, an excellent recipe from “Madhur Jaffrey’s Quick and Easy Indian Cooking” (Chronicle Books, 2007). It combines heavy whipping cream with garam masala, cayenne, ground cumin, paprika, fresh garlic, and fresh ginger to form a marinade that is briefly rubbed (just 10 minutes!) into chicken breasts that have been previously been slit, pricked, and rubbed with salt and lemon juice.

Just before baking the breasts, sprinkle them with a bit more of the spices and black pepper, dried mint (I used fresh), and another sprinkle of lemon juice (I used Meyer lemons for a very aromatic option).

Here’s the dish just before I popped it into the hot, hot oven.

The chicken is roasted at highest oven temperature in the top third of the oven and the result really is silken, velvet-y chicken and sauce, as shown below. Yum!

Three nights later, I tried the dish substituting thin turkey fillets for the boneless, skinless chicken breasts. The dish was still delectable, but the turkey was drier and not as “silky” as the chicken, so I’d definitely opt for that. I feel this preparation would be too overpowering for any type of seafood, other than a hearty white fish, such as swordfish or halibut.