As previously mentioned, I went to The Affair where I attended a chai demo given by cookbook author, chef, biologist and native Indian Raghavan Iyer. After realizing that we have this book at home written by Iyer, I paged through until I found a recipe that contained all (or almost all) of the ingredients we already had at home and came upon chicken with potatoes. I did end up going to the store to grab some ingredients for the spicy garam masaala, and in so doing, forgot the turmeric, and couldn’t locate unsweetened coconut (had sweetened at home though) nor dried Thai chillies and stupidly thought that dried chipotles would suffice. For the most part they did, but the smokiness was nothing if not lame and the spiciness was somewhat lacking.
Since I am trying this new thing where I carefully read through a recipe before delving in, I noted that I desperately needed to make the spicy garam masaala before doing anything else. In his demo and book Iyer explains the importance of using fresh spices because one spice has not one flavor, but six. SIX guys! It’s like this:
- Flavor 1: whole seed
- Flavor 2: ground whole seed
- Flavor 3: Whole seed dry roasted
- Flavor 4: Whole seed dry roasted and then ground
- Flavor 5: Whole seed fried in hot oil (or clarified butter) 10-20 seconds until it has a nutty aroma
- Flavor 6: Whole seed fried in hot oil (or clarified butter) 10-20 seconds until it has a nutty aroma, then removed from the oil and ground.
Had I not known the above, I would have been a complete slackass and used already ground spices, mixed them together and Called. It. A. Day. Learning this spice secret is great; greater even than learning The Secret. To create the spicy garam marsaala then, I used whole spices. The freshness of them is unclear since I bought them from a grocer who has held them for who knows how long. However, because I roasted the seeds myself, it has to help…right?
Whoa! It's my banner!
After I roasted the seeds a couple of minutes and let them cool, I took out a reserve coffee grinder (at the time we only had two – I mean this to infer that we now have three) and threw everything pictured above, plus the chipotles and ground it. No more than a minute later I had a chipotle version of spicy garam marsaala.
Iyer says that this is only good for about a month in a container before it begins to smell and taste rancid. I assume that the freezer could prevent this from happening as fast? Regardless that is where mine no resides and I’ll just guess that it is OK for three months (and I just pulled that number out of the air since it lies between 32 days and forever).
I have now spent about a whole ten minutes prepping this part of the dinner (a component of which I only need 1 teaspoon). Realistically, this was no more complicated than the recipe for the chicken with potatoes, or any recipe really (with the exception of this one).
I wedged the potatoes into eight pieces each and let them simmer in the skillet while I worked the coconut mixture; consisting of coconut, garlic, oil, coriander, and chilies (though truthfully I just used jalapeños).
When the coconut began to brown, I pulled the skillet from the heat, scraped the mixture into the food processor with the specified 1/2 cup of water and let it run a few minutes until it could not be processed anymore. The seeds are not going to break down in a large processor like mine (11 Cup) and that is perfectly fine.
I started working on the chicken; cutting it up and pan frying it until golden brown. At this point, everything came together; chicken, the potatoes you probably forgot about, the coconut mixture, spicy garam masaala, the tomatoes, salt, and turmeric.
When the chicken is cooked through, garnish with cilantro and perhaps make some rice!
