Punjabi Chole

ell, I've probably mangled this dish beyond recognition, but it's something I make quite often. Essentially, it's a spicy combination of chick peas and tomato. The spice can come from a number of places, most traditionally from finely chopped peppers, but I use cayenne instead. Mainly, this is because hot peppers are not always available here and the authentic ones are obviously not local to me.

Here's the list of ingredients for a typical batch:

• A cup of dried chick peas, soaked in cold water for at least 8 hours
• Two whole tomatoes, diced. You can seed them if you want. I leave them in.
• A white onion, thinly sliced into half moons
• Pinch of salt
• Freshly ground cumin, maybe a tablespoon
• Amchoor powder (powdered dried mango)
• Coriander seeds, ground
• Fenugreek seeds, ground
• Mustard seeds, ground
• Shelled black cardamom pods, ground
• 1 or two teaspoons of garam masala
• 1 or 2 teasspons of curry powder, to taste
• cayenne pepper or red chili powder, to taste
• Handful of chopped cilantro, for garnish

Start by sweating and softening up the onion in a pot big enough to eventually contain everything. You want to do this over relatively low heat -- sweat. If you hear sizzling, it's too hot. Turn it down.

While that's cooking, grind your spices up. You can use a spare coffee grinder, or a mortar and pestle. Traditionally, the whole spices would be very lightly toasted in a pan to increase flavor, before grinding. You can do this if you want. It'll still be good if you skip this step and you don't want to overdo it and burn the spices. Burnt cumin is nasty.

Dice the tomato, and add the chickpeas, a cup of water, the tomatoes, and the spices to the pot. Stir everything, and bring to a simmer. Cover, and let it cook until the chickpeas give way to gentle pressure with a fork (you don't want them mushy), and the liquid has reduced to the consistency that you like. If you find yourself running out of liquid before the chickpeas are done, add a bit more water.

When things are just about finished, stir in the cilantro. You can save a few pieces to garnish the finished dish when you serve it. There are versions of this dish that call for the addition of a regular tea bag during cooking. This turns the chickpeas black without altering their flavour.

Valid: XHTML, CSS