Chana Massala Challenge

The Challenge: cook enough chana massala for 10 people.
The Issue: converting a recipe... (MATH!!!!!!)
The Result: mixed and salty.

The extended family were over at my parents house this year for Christmas and we'd planned a non-traditional feast for Boxing Day: Curry Dinner. Due to many factors, we ended up eating this meal a few days later, but that didn't really affect anything, as I prepared my dish in advance.

Now, those who know me know that math is definitely not my strong suit. The recipe called for 200g of chick peas, and the cans I was using only listed information in ml or fluid oz... so I had to figure out how to convert it all and (even using a calculater), it took a really long time. Eventually I worked out that I had to multiply everything in the recipe by a factor of 8. This is not an easy task...  And I fully admit that after doing all the hard work, I ended up NOT using 8 x 1 teaspoon of salt, or 8 x 800ml of water...  so I was learning on the fly.  I also discovered the fun reaction of water and baking soda... ooohh bubbles.. rising bubbles... spilling over bubbles....ahhh!!!!!

The recipe itself is already in my blog - see the side-bar and go to October 2009...

The outcome.. well, it took forever to get the water to boil off. I introduced the dish as thrice-boiled chana massala, as it had literally been boiled on three separate occasions to try remove the water. ugh. And then, much to my dismay, the dish was incredible salty. Crazy salty.  I asked for help in this department as I had no idea how to remove salt from a dish... my aunt suggested I add apricot jam. Fortunately we had some, and the entire can of it was plunked into the dish. This did help, but it was still way too salty for my personal taste - others loved it...

All in all it was quite the learning exercise. I want to try make it again as a regular size batch, but might wait a while for the curry smell to disapate from the house!