In the past 25 years of the American food revolution, home cooks have learned to employ a wide variety of cooking techniques, tools and ingredients to bring flavor and freshness to their kitchens.

Fresh herbs, seasonal foods, local and organic products, flavored oils and vinegars, and gourmet additions from truffle oil to black garlic have all had their celebrity moments.

Now, with an increasing interest in foods from India and the Middle and Near East, Americans are adding spice — literally — to their culinary arsenal.

In the Islands, Wailea Agricultural Group on the Big Island's Hamakua Coast is working on adding cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg to their hearts of palm product line. Fresh bay leaf, curry leaf and turmeric are available at many farmers markets. And brands of flavored Hawaiian salts have proliferated.

A few years ago, Kai Cowell was just another home cook experimenting with spices — albeit a very well-trained one, having studied at the Culinary Institute of America and finished her training at Kapi'olani Community College. She learned to toast spices and grind them to release their heady flavors. She made up her own mixtures, "just tweaking and tweaking until I got something I liked."

Her chief tester, husband Don, liked it, too. Friends she invited to her Round Top home raved. Pretty soon, she was in the spice business, turning a cottage on her property into a spice studio, and in September 2003, launching her line of four Kaiulani Spice rubs and seasonings at the Kapi'olani Saturday farmers market. (www.kaiulanispices.com; 946-9202).

From the beginning, Cowell had no fear. She grew up in the Philippines eating fresh, locally grown foods, cooking from scratch, the eldest of five who became a second mother to her four half-siblings. She remembers that when chicken was on the menu, you started out by chasing it around the yard.

Now, her spice message to others is: "Don't be afraid."

Go to the cupboard, see what you have, smell the different spices, rub them between your hands, fry them in a little oil. Roasting, toasting and frying spices are common techniques in Indian cooking and other spice-oriented cuisines. Heat and friction release the volatile oils in the various nuts, seeds, barks, roots and fruits that we call spices.

Cowell combines spices with aromatics (garlic, ginger, onions, lavender, citrus), chilis or peppers (fresh or dried), salts and sugars to broaden and balance flavors.

See what happens if you add cinnamon and allspice to a beef stew, curry to saimin or egg dishes, or Chinese five-spice powder and ginger to a plain pudding. "I didn't realize until maybe a year ago that I could just sprinkle a spice mixture directly on a salad; no need to even make a vinaigrette," Cowell said. Drizzle on oil and toss salad to coat, pour on spices, and add acid (lemon juice, vinegar, citrus juice) at the last minute before serving.

Spices, she said, create "flavor without the labor."

Cowell makes four spice blends and is in the final stages of creating three more. Her "factory" is the cottage on her property where the only commercial equipment is a small grinder and a hand-cranked bottle labeler. She still uses a home oven to toast spices. Her staff of two mixes the spices in lidded plastic storage tubs of the sort you'd find in any hardware store.

They work in small batches, following formulas Cowell developed — one part of this to three parts of that, and so on. Their inventory never extends beyond what can fit on a shelving unit such as that found in the average garage.

Cowell said that she started experimenting with spice and rub mixtures because she couldn't find flavors that fit Island-style cooking, and also because she found many commercially available mixtures too bland or too tired to lend lively flavor to foods.

She came up with four blends: