Garam masala is not a curry powder. It is a finishing blend of warm spices, usually cardamom, cinnamon, clove, black pepper and cumin, and it goes in at the end rather than the beginning.

Add it in the last minute of cooking. Boil it for twenty minutes and you have thrown the aroma away.

A half teaspoon stirred through a finished curry, dal or biryani is enough to change it. Use it in marinades too, where it has time to work into the meat.

On the spice shelf at Curry Corner in North Melbourne.