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Monday, March 28, 2011

Garam Masala

I'll be working part time for the next few weeks until they find someone to replace me.  Don't ask how I got suckered into giving a 7 week notice, but I did.  At least I was able to dictate my schedule, and so starting last week I transitioned to my part time schedule of 3 days a week.  Last Wednesday on my day off, Taylor and I took a little down time after homework was complete to watch the Food Network, and oh how I have missed my shows!  The weekend line up is just not the same, with marathon episodes of Guy Fieri going through endless Diners, Drive Ins and Dives, making me want to puke at the crap people eat.  Sure, there's also lots of Alton Brown thrown in on the weekend, but let's be honest, one can only handle geeky food talk for so long.  But I digress.

We caught an episode of Sunny Anderson's Cooking for Real and the Baked Chicken Drummies looked fantastic.  I love Indian food but am too intimidated to make it, but this looked like a simple enough recipe for me to try.  I made my grocery list on Saturday and searched two grocery stores for Garam Masala, the key ingredient to this dish, to no avail.  I became transfixed on making this dish Saturday night so I looked up how to make my own Garam Masala and found a quick and easy recipe here

Lo and behold, I just happened to have all ingredients ON HAND in my pantry to make my own mix!  I jumped up and down and immediately tweeted "I have arrived!  I am officially a foodie!"  Never mind that no one was here to crown me with an official Foodie title, I went ahead and took the honors upon myself.
Garam Masala is more smokey in flavor than hot or spicy and added a nice punch to the chicken.  I also added some to our sauteed spinach, the veggie side dish of the meal.  It is a beautiful concoction of rich spices, including Cumin, Coriander, Cardamon, Pepper, Cinnamon, Cloves and Nutmeg.  The Cardamon spice is a little random, but luckily I had a stash of it from making my own Chai

I have made my own concoction of spices a couple of times before, including Jerk Chicken rub.  Our local grocery store Sprouts has a wonderful little bulk spice section where you can get small amounts of random, yet common fresh spices.  It ends up being much cheaper to make your own mixture, or even to just get small amounts of spices that you don't commonly use so that it doesn't go bad, rather than buying even a small jar of a spice.  I calculated that this little bit of Garam Masala cost just under a buck, where you'd normally pay at least $5 for a jar.   
The chicken drummies turned out great by the way.  Did anyone out there cook up something good this weekend?  I'm linking up to Heather's Life Made Lovely Monday.

10 comments:

  1. I used to eat loads of Indian food back home but still on the hunt for my favorite place to eat around here. The problem I have making it us that I'm the only hot head, the rest of the family not so much.

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  2. That looks so yummy!! I'll have to try that recipe the next time my dad visits. He loves Indian food.

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  3. I love indian food! Nice job on your Garam Masala. I'm gonna bookmark the recipe & do it myself, too. Thanks!
    (Visiting from Lovely link up!)

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  4. I haven't made anything recently (thank goodness for frozen leftovers!), but I DID just find an excellent looking recipe for shakshuka (one of my favorite things I ate on my trip to Israel). Yum!

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  5. Someone emailed and asked if the chicken dish was too spicy for kids. Not at all! My kids loved it and asked for seconds. The flavor is definitely more smokey than spicy.

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  6. delicious! i think i just might try to make my own as well!

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  7. Are you even kidding me...Indian food and Chai are some of my all time faves! Hubs and I went to India a few years ago and he spent a day learning how to make Puri and watching the chef & his curry magic, then we *ahem* smuggled legit spices home to recreate the YUMMIEST Chai evah. Totally would have ya'll over for dinner but... ya know the whole Cali vs TX then, ugh! XO

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  8. Oh, I made some coconut & orange chicken tenders, and while the hubs couldn't understand why anyone would mess with perfection, they were D-E-licious!! And I'm completely jealous of your bulk foods spice thing.

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  9. I love blogger foodie type of posts....lol..and Im hooked on Food Network too....I mean form morning til night!!! hahaha

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