Channa Masala

The Ingredients

I took a picture of the ingredients because it seemed like such a small amount of things were going to come together as dinner. And, then did. There's no rice in the shot, but I already had some rice cooked and waiting.

I didn't have any Garam Masala spice, and I had a moment yesterday when I realized I could have put some together from scratch. However, I didn't. I used the Madras curry powder you see in the shot. It's the center, and the star of the dish.

The whole meal was a spicy, delicious comfort food. It also had bits of zing to it from the cardamom pods. I cracked them open with a knife and scooped their insides out into the pan with the onions and garlic. I don't have a mortar and pestle yet, but if I had then the zing wouldn't have been in such concentrated pockets, and would have lent a great mellow "hrm what's the flavor?" to the whole dish. The cardamom pods were not part of the original recipe, but I saw them used in another channa masala recipe (whole) and so I thought I'd give it a shot in my own way. Since I hated the idea of having the whole pod in my bowl, and having to eat around it, I thought it would be a much better idea to get out the good stuff.

Unfortunately, the food smelled so good, and I was so hungry, that pictures of it were not taken. However, the image on the link below will give you an idea of what it looked like. Mine had more tomatoes (about half a can) as that seemed to be the general consensus in the comments.

So, here's a link to the recipe at seriouseats.com

For my version, as I said above:

Add two cardamom pods, opened up with a knife. Scrape out the insides and into the pan while the onions and garlic are just finishing their cooking.

Add half a can of tomatoes instead of 3tbsp. You'll be glad you did.

Leave out the jalapeno (I did because I didn't have one, but you could put it in. However, the cayenne pepper says that you don't need it, seriously.)

Use Madras curry powder instead (or garam masala, but I don't know the flavor of that in this dish).

Serve over brown rice; and, I recommend serving a salad alongside, or some other simple vegetable. There really weren't enough vegetables in this dish to make me happy, so later I had some salad while I watched Religulous with the Nerd's sister.