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Here’s how it goes:

You run out of garum masala.

Days go by. A couple weeks even.

You love curry.

But you refuse to shop in grocery stores for things you can find elsewhere.

There is a spice store in town.

You don’t go into town that often.

So this morning you look at your Indian cookbook (one of Vij’s), hoping to find a discussion about what to do when you have no garum masala and are not heading to town anytime soon.

Make your own Vij says.

Of course!!!

He also says: but make sure your kitchen has good ventilation and the doors to your bedrooms are closed as the roasting of spices can get quite pungent. Maybe open a window. Also you will need a spice (or coffee) grinder.

Hmmm. You’re missing a few of the spices and anyway you don’t feel like breaking up a bag of cinnamon sticks or buying a grinder and you especially don’t like the word ‘ventilation’…

But you DO have SOME of the necessary spices and this in itself is oddly thrilling, this idea of neither buying garam masala nor roasting and grinding your own nor doing without but simply making an easy version of it… until you next go to town and can either a) buy some already made or b) buy the spices necessary to blend your own now that you know what they are, but what’s even more thrilling, and seriously odd too, is that it never once occurred to you in all the decades you’ve been making curry to wonder what garum masala actually was.

Epiphanies come in many flavours.

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