The Book of Spice taught me that there's a very close relative of the Arab spice sumac found right in Nepal, and it's used to make achaars and much else. It's barely exported and little-known. It would be such a coup if folks were able to source premium high-quality bhakimlo (that's what it's called in Nepal) and export it to Western markets. The branding is important, along with quality control because once it gets commoditified, it's hard to compete on volume, specially for a place like Nepal with small area and non-automated agricultural practices.
On a similar theme, siltimmur. Surely I've mentioned the spice here. It's sichuan pepper prickly-ash found in Nepal, but much stronger than the regular timmur. So sharp is the taste and the experience of eating it that 'to eat siltimmur' (siltimmur khanu) means to die.
The sad fact is that the spice is barely known inside Nepal: my parents and all of my friends who I asked about it knew the phrase it was used in, but never thought that it was something edible that might be related to the very common spice timmur. They thought it was just a turn of phrase nothing more. And so I have been unable to source the spice while in Kathmandu. If only somebody could scale up the production and export of this spice...
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