Ask Ottolenghi: how do you make your own ras el hanout? | Middle Eastern food and drink

Do you have a good recipe for ras el hanout? It’s quite expensive to buy, but we may already have all the spices in the cupboard.
Ras el hanout is a brilliant Arabic spice mix. I always add some to any meat patty or kofta mix, and it’s also lovely stirred into oil or butter and rubbed all over a chicken before it’s roasted; traybakes also love a sprinkle of ras el hanout before going into the oven, be that with chickpeas, cauliflower, cubed butternut squash and so on.

The name roughly translates to “head of the shop” or “top shelf”, so in other words it’s traditionally made with whatever spices the shop or blender considers their best. As a result, recipes vary wildly, though most include some or all of black pepper, cardamom, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, ginger, turmeric and nutmeg. There are also regional variations to bear in mind: in Tunisia, say, it tends to be milder and include dried rose petals, whereas Moroccan ras el hanout has more of a kick.

My own home blend is as follows: a half-teaspoon of ground black pepper, a teaspoon each of ground cumin, ground coriander, ground ginger, ground allspice, ground nutmeg and ground cinnamon, a quarter-teaspoon of ground cloves and two teaspoons of ground cardamom; if you like, add a teaspoon of ground turmeric and a quarter-teaspoon of ground cayenne, too. That said, this spice blend lends itself to experimentation, so, as long as you hit a few key notes, it’s a great one to make at home, especially if you have lots of spices that need using up. I hope this has been useful, rather than vague, because ras el hanout can feature anything from eight to 80 different ingredients.