Ramadan Rations

I'm not Muslim, but apparently it is Ramadan, so I decided to scout out some Ramadan recipes. Pretty much everything I found appeals to me, but I made to narrow it down to something, so I picked Shami Kebabs. To me a kebab is a skewer of basically anything, but this kebabs are actually more of a deep-fried patty, like a Falafel. I had a bit of a problem cooking the split peas in this recipe, which acts as a binding agent for the meat patties. I had all of them forced into these pretty diamond shapes and then I had to have half them and watch them sort of fall apart when I was frying them. If I had a food processor and had cooked the split peas longer, I don't think this would've been a problem. They have a nice spicy curried flavor and go great with some Raita on pita bread.

As a side to the pitas, I asked Shannon if she thought she'd like a recipe called Cholay, some spiced chickpeas in tomato sauce. She said that she was sure that I'd made something similar to this already. This stands to reason, because I did make a chickpea and tomato dish, but it wasn't cholay, it was a Chickpea Curry. This was surprisingly different, despite having some similar ingredients. The sauce is incredibly simple, but intensely flavorful. Browning onions can add so much to a dish, just compare French Onion Soup to a bowl of pureed sautéed onions. If it weren't for browning the onions and frying the cumin seeds, this dish would just sort of be a watery, flavorless mess, I think. Instead, it was something I enjoyed for dinner, as well as cold as leftovers.