The kala of a cook, the measure of a recipe and the heart of a dish is its masala. Get that right, and you get the meal right. And a few Parsi-owned masala businesses are offering pre-mixed masala recipes, for Parsi dishes and others, so you never go wrong. From spice farms in Kerala to the handy APMC in Navi Mumbai, they have cracked the recipe for the perfect dhansak. With their help, so can you.

Jinaz's Spices
An ex-teacher and full-time mom-turned-entrepreneur, the beginning of Jienazz Mistry's "masala journey" was an interesting one. "It began when I realised that off-the-shelf pre-packaged masalas were not yielding the desired taste in our food, which is why we were ordering takeaways from restaurants more regularly. During that time, I met a friend who has the best whole spices plantations in Kerala. She gave me some of her samples, and they were fabulous. I experimented by making masalas with them. After a lot of trial and error, I came upon my final recipes. It took me about six months to get them right. That is how Jinaz's Masalas was born about a year-and-a-half ago. It has all original recipes and nothing has been copy-pasted from anywhere."