New pastes make tandoori dishes a breeze

Visit a supermarket just about anywhere in the world and you'll find shelf after shelf of sauces, marinades, rubs and pastes designed to turn a simple piece of chicken or lamb into something wonderfully exotic. 

Whether your tastes tend towards Indian, Mexican or Thai there are dozens of options that promise to transform your dish into something deliciously different. 

The reality is often that the recipes are complex and demand all sorts of additions. 

When a PR for The Spice Tailor offered to send me some samples of the new Fast Paste range I was sceptical; but a freebie is a freebie. 

The Spice Tailor has launched two variants; Classic Tandoori and Creamy Tandoori in Australia. Both are simple to use; and even without a tandoori oven you get an authentic tandoori taste; as good as any Indian takeaway since I lived in Clapham Common in London and ate Indian several times a week. 

Fast Pastes are promoted as perfect for spicing up barbecues for spring and summer. You simply cover any meat, fish or vegetable in the fast paste and get cooking. On completion add the spicy seasoning to taste. 

Anjum Anand, founder of The Spice Tailor and a TV chef and cookery writer, said: “There are so many options for people looking to create their own Indian meals at home. It feels to me that there has been a gap in the market for a long time to show people how they can introduce authentic Indian tastes and flavours to dishes beyond just curries.

 “At The Spice Tailor, we want to make genuinely authentic Indian food and flavours accessible to everyone and the introduction of Fast Paste means that people can not only tailor the spice and flavour of their dish to their own taste, but they can use any number of main ingredients and introduce the flavour to any type of cooking – proving how easy it is to introduce Indian flavours to any meal.

"We know not everyone has time to marinade and grind spices, so we hope the Fast Paste range will make real Indian flavours accessible to everyone any day, any time, without compromising quality.”  

My verdict; the pastes are easy to use and the tastes are authentic.  Affordable, easy to use  and recommended. 

The Fast Paste range is available now, exclusively in Woolworths, with an RRP of $4.79.