Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Masala!

I cleaned out the "lunch closet" this weekend- a holdover from the days when I kept it stocked with things for the kids to choose from when making lunches which they are way too cool to do these days. I had an abundance of peanuts and remembered my friends at Showmethecurry.com making some masala peanuts last week. When I checked their recipe though, it had a lot of raw onions in it as well as the elusive curry leaves, and didn't really seem like something you could just have at your desk for when you needed a little snack (if you didn't want to alienate your co-workers). So I looked around tonight and found a ton of variations, and I cobbled together my own recipe out of many. They are very tasty and spicy enough that a small handful is more than satisfying. So, here's what I did:
Heated 2 T of a garlic and ginger infused oil that I had on hand, then added the following:
2T black mustard seed- stirred in and heated until they started popping (and making a huge mess!)
Add in 2 T ground coriander
2T brown sugar
1T ground cumin
1 1/2 t salt
1/4 t cayenne pepper
1/2 t chili powder
1/2 t asafatida
1/2 t turmeric
Stirred all of that to a paste, then added 6 C dry roasted peanuts which I stirred constantly until peanuts were well coated and spices had had a chance to roast into the nuts.

Mighty tasty! And the house smells so so so good!

2 comments:

donna said...

Are you the new Pioneer Woman? I have a fascination with reading recipes and viewing food photography. Never heard of asafatida. Salt and brown sugar are the only ingredients I have on hand from that recipe. I bet they did smell good. Hope you do more blogging about food.

Beth Akins said...

Sounds fantastic! The Chivda I made two weeks ago was yummy and I did most of the eating of it! I didn't have all of the ingredients and made do with what I had which included some garam masala.
Are you off this week, too?