KONKANI STYLE KOLI MASALA RECIPE
Dipping a toe back into the Cuisine of the Quarter. Yesterday, I made this masala recipe. There are, indeed, about 19 items in the list. I ended up with a couple more on top of that, as I subbed a mix of caraway and thyme for the ajwain and used a mixture of kashmiri, sanaam, and piquin chiles for the Sankeshwari and Byadagi chiles. Toasting and grinding everything made the kitchen smell delightful! I ended up with about a cup of masala powder, which is more than enough for our two person household.
So, this got used today in:
MAHARASHTRIAN KALA CHANA COOKED IN KOLI MASALA
This was my first time working with black chickpeas (Rancho Gordo!). I had soaked and cooked them yesterday and stored them in the fridge in their cooking liquid. Today I made the masala paste (onion, coconut (I used a judicious fistful of unsweetened flakes), chiles, new to me ingredient kokum, the koli masala powder, and other dry spices). Then I proceeded with the recipe, using some of the cooking liquid in place of the water called for. Rather than just letting it go for 5 minutes on the stovetop, once I brought it to a boil, I covered it and put it in a 300F oven, topping it off from time to time with a little more of the cooking liquid, for about an hour. We had the resulting stew for lunch today. It was very welcome after shoveling cars out! I would absolutely make this again. Now I need to find other recipes where I can use this ground masala.
