I have a confession to make: For years, I have been cooking a dish that I love very very much but I haven’t told you about it because it comes from two words that I cannot bring myself to publicly own up to.* Especially on a site where if you suggested I use one, I’d suggest you haven’t been paying attention.

It’s a box mix, people. And it makes the most fantastic rajmah, or kidney bean curry. Wait! Let me explain. Long before I had cooked a single Indian dish, I was overwhelmed at the thought of it. I didn’t have the spices. I didn’t know which spices I’d want. I was sure I’d use them all wrong. There’s like an art and a science to this and I am a dilettante in the world of Indian cooking.

And one day we were at Whole Foods, and they of course had some cooking samples out, these provided from a company that was packaging Indian spice mixes for classic dishes, for which they helpfully provided recipes on the back. The aloo gobi was okay. The chicken tikka masala was, you know, not bad either. But the kidney bean curry? Swoon. We took it home with us that very night.

In the years since, I have found Indian recipes I can’t get enough of. There are Curried Lentils and Sweet Potatoes, Tangy Cabbage Salads and an Everyday Yellow Dal, Red Split Lentils with Cabbage, Indian-Spiced Vegetable Fritters and my favorite, the one that we make many times a year, Indian-Spiced Cauliflower and Potatoes.

And we always serve it with my super-secret rajmah mix. In fact, my shame associated with taking spices from a packaged mix was so great, I failed to note this wee detail: I was actually cooking this dish from scratch! There are beans, chopped tomotoes, canned sauce, fresh ginger and onion and garlic and chiles and you prep them all yourself and seriously, does this sound to you like a box mix? No? That’s because all it provides is the spices. Spices that, as it turns out, are already in my spice rack.

Once I did realize this, it wasn’t long before I no longer even needed it for that. Free at last! And free to share without shame.

* I promise, you will never see a Smitten Kitchen recipe that says, “first, buy this thing from this brand at this store.”

One year ago: Pasta Puttanesca, Broken Artichoke Heart Salad

Two years ago: Dill Bread