Last night I made chana masala for dinner because the weather was terrible and we had all the ingredients at home. It had two recipes within recipes–one for garlic paste, the other for ginger paste–which required a huge amount of ginger and garlic plus prep time. As I only needed one tablespoon of each, I just used a garlic press (instead of pureeing 50 cloves of garlic, as requested). Perhaps the dish would have been better if I had made pastes as directed, but I don’t regret the shortcut.
The chana masala was very good, and I think using chickpeas that were dried and then boiled instead of canned made the texture much nicer than expected.
I really want to try chicken with split yellow peas and spinach-smothered lentils now. Very exciting.
