Spices are one of the quickest, simplest ways to add bags of flavour to your cooking. Just a pinch of turmeric can turn sauces a golden, earthy yellow, while the likes of cumin and coriander form the backbone of thousands of our favourite dishes. But when it comes to actually buying them, we tend to think of them as nothing more than a commodity.
Mallika Basu wants to change that. As a food writer, cookbook author and columnist for the Evening Standard she certainly knows her way around a kitchen, but when it came to buying spices to cook with at home, she always felt a little underwhelmed.
‘Spices are the biggest shortcut to flavour, yet they’re sold mostly as a commodity in packets, tubs and jars that aren’t easy to store or even get a spoon inside,’ she says. ‘I wanted to launch a range of spices that were heady and high quality, as well as practical for passionate home cooks like myself.’
Deciding to take matters into her own hands, Mallika launched Sizl with her business partner Amar Dani in 2019. With sixteen individual spices on offer (plus five different spice blends), the pair are on a mission to make cooks think about spices as more than just a basic ingredient, offering something of true quality that shines through in cooking.
