Anyway, I stumbled across this delicious looking dish on her blog last week, and the image of this Indian chickpea tomato stew has been seared into my brain ever since. Today, I decided to give it a try.
The Recipe
Chana Masala, smittenkitchen.com
Apprehension Meter
The meter sat around the medium mark for this recipe- mostly responding to some of the ingredients, rather than any special techniques or equipment. In that department, the recipe is very tame.
But let’s start with this laundry list of spices. Eight spices in one dish?! And what the heck is garam masala? Having to buy this many spices for one recipe is typically where I draw the line and move onto the next recipe.
After taking inventory, I found that I already had two or three of these spices in my pantry, which meant not needing to buy as many at the grocery store. Good. But, it still meant having to buy a bunch of new spices that a) I don’t really have room for in my itty, bitty cupboards, and b) I’d probably use once, and then not again for a long, long time. Bad.
Another ingredient that made me sweat a little was the “fresh, hot green chili pepper.” Within the pepper family, I have only ever cooked with bell peppers, and sometimes even that feels a little exotic. I’m not a huge fan of spicy foods, so when I saw that I’d have to buy a hot green chili pepper, my taste buds burned in anticipation- and not in a good way.
And finally, ginger. Doesn’t sound too scary, does it? Well, have you ever seen ginger? Sitting there all mangled and stumpy? I had seen it used a few times on various cooking shows, and knew that it needed peeling at some point, but that’s where my ginger knowledge ended.
Here’s How It Really Went
Preparing the ingredients for this recipe was pretty easy, and required no special skills or appliances. Everything went more or less according to the plan, with a few hiccups.
Let’s start with the ginger. Like I said, I had minimal instruction on how to deal with this guy. The recipe called for grated ginger. After using a sharp knife to slice off the “skin,” I went into the drawer to get the little cheese grater, and found that it was gone. Note: don’t try to cook a new dish that requires certain tools while your roommate is in the process of packing up her things to move to Michigan. Rookie mistake.
Instead, I found a vegetable peeler, and tried to hack off little shavings of the ginger. This was frustrating and difficult, and I gave up before I reached the requisite 3 teaspoons. Having a grater would probably have made it easier, but even so, I still wouldn’t recommend using powered ginger (if they even make such a thing). The smell and taste of fresh ginger is really something, and I think is a key component to this dish.
You could say things got a "little dicey..." Yep, I said it.
The second challenge was the tomatoes.
The recipe calls for fresh or canned, and while I would almost always prefer fresh, I think in this case, canned might be better.
The fresh tomatoes basically disintegrated during the cooking process, leaving behind some seeds and skins. Canned tomatoes, I think, would have cooked down much more nicely. Their juice would have contributed well to the stew, and the tomatoes themselves would have broken down nicely, while still retaining some substance.
Onion, garlic, ginger, and little flecks of a green jalapeno pepper, smelling oh so good
And the final dilemma: again, forgetting that my roommate had already packed up her kitchen gadgets, I reached into the drawer for the can opener to open my chickpeas and… gone. And, unless you're MacGyver, finding a replacement tool for a can opener isn’t so easy. This required a pause in the cooking process, a quick run to the CVS down the street—which, luckily, sold can openers—and eight dollars and fifteen minutes later, I was back in action.
My newest kitchen gadget. :)
The final product? Colorful, a tad spicy, full of protein and fiber, but… would I make it again? Probably not in the near future. It was pretty fun to cook, with all of its exotic aromas, but I was disappointed that mine didn’t turn out as rich, thick, and flavorful looking as Smitten Kitchen’s. Either I’m not a very good cook, or she’s way too good at food photography.
