Asafoetida for the first time

Yesterday, I brought a new spice into use in the kitchen: asafoetida. The reason for trying it was to experiment with a potato curry recipe. The one I chose to start with was "Indian Curried Potatoes, Peas and Carrots" from Heather Van Vorous' book Eating for IBS.

I usually enjoy Heather's lowfat and gut-friendly recipes using flavors from around the world, but this one was a real stinker. In the literal sense. With an entire tablespoon of asafoetida in the recipe, the curry reeked of this spice to high heaven (I'm convinced it's not coincidence that part of the name of this spice is "fetid") and the house still has a faint lingering odor of it in the air on the next day. The smell of the spice is far worse than its taste, which is pleasing to some of the same taste/smell receptors that like onion, garlic and stinky cheeses.

The most serious problem in the recipe is that asafoetida in such a large quantity overpowers all the other spices in the dish. We couldn't even taste a hint of the chili powder, cumin or coriander. We started thinking maybe what was missing from this one-note curry was ginger and garlic, but a small bit of research I did last night with another Indian cookbook in my collection, Vegetarische Indische Küche by Sumana Ray, alerted me to two patterns: 1) curries consisting mostly of potatoes and including asafoetida do not usually also have garlic and ginger and 2) asafoetida is used by the dash, not by the tablespoon.

I'd like to continue looking in other collections of recipes from India to determine whether this pattern holds true in other Indian curry collections. My other three sources of Indian or Indian-style recipes do not use asafoetida at all or don't put it in the potato dishes.