TAD DAY 08

Yup... another cooking TAD. I have never made Indian food before, but I have been all about eating Indian food lately. I am also always a fan of warm, stewy, chickpeas. (Check out Lazy Lulu's chickpea thing.) That said, I was recently turned onto Smitten Kitchen, an excellent food blog written by a new mom, named Deb, who cooks comforting and beautiful food in her small NYC kitchen. Needless to say, her blog speaks to me.

When I saw that Deb had posted a recipe for Chana Masala, I decided to take a stab at it. I guess I should have gone easy on the cayenne, like Deb did, because it was a bit too hot to enjoy. Oh well. The upside was that I learned about toasting cumin seeds and figured out how to "grind" them myself without a grinder or mortar and pestle. I put them in a plastic bag, placed them on my marble cutting board, and smacked the heck out of them with a sturdy little bamboo cutting board.