And the Cooking Contest Winner is...

John Wright! John prepared the vegetarian version of Chicken Tikka Masala, called Chana Masala (recipe supplied by me at his request) and his review follows below. John wins an original sketch by me of any one of the Tribe cast as they appeared at the end of Legend of the Curse of the Legend of the Ruby Crystals. Send me your choice John, and I'll post the sketch for all to see here.

Alas, John was also the only entrant, so I'm scratching the cooking contest. I'll probably just build a section of the site that's dedicated to my favorite recipes.

Chana Masala
Review by John Wright

Upon adding the spices, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to stir them in well enough and they'd all clump in the corner and make an ugly spice-ball, leaving the rest of the dish without that delicious 'this is an Indian dish' flavor. This didn't happen. Preparing this was not frightening, did not start a fire, did not cost a lot, and did not cause any other kind of trouble. It sounds silly to list them, but I've tried dishes that have done all those things (well, usually
just a lot of smoke, not fire).

This was my first foray into preparing Indian-influenced food at home, and it's only fair to say that I thought I would be pretty wowed by the flavors, and I was. So was my girlfriend. In fact, the high nutritional content and 'tasty' quality make this a very good dish to prepare when you want to feed yourself something with some protein (rice AND beans) or impress someone, or both, without risking moderate to severe injury. On the visual side, it came out with a pleasant gold-green mix, a kind of "early fall lawn and leaves" look. On the health side, the only salt in this dish is in the canned chickpeas, and while my can had not too much sodium (about 100 mg), it came out great and not 'bleh, it needs salt.' So if you're watching your sodium intake, this is pretty low in sodium but high on edibility and non-hot spices. That is not intended as medical advice.

To sum up: if you're afraid to cook, want something 'delicious,' want someone to be impressed by you, want something pretty, or want something Indian, this is a good dish to try.