I had to hustle up something for lunch and when I scanned what was available in stock in the kitchen, I discovered about two cups full of Kabuli Chana. Since it had been sometime since we had it, I took the whole lot and soaked them in warm water early in the morning.
Around noon, I chopped three medium sized onions, four large green chillies and blended four tomatoes into a purree. I took some oil in the bottom half of a pressure cooker, fried the onions and added some ginger garlic paste when the onions were brown. After frying that for a while, I bunged in some coriander seed powder, cummin seed powder, red chilly powder and turmeric powder to the mixture and stir fried for a while. I then added the soaked chana to the mixture, stirred for a while and added the tomato purree to the lot and closed the pressure cooker and put on the weight. After the first whistle, I turned the flame down to low and left the pot to pressure cook for ten minutes. After that I turned off the fire and let the heat come down on its own. That took about five minutes. After opening the lid, I found that the dish was ready. I turned on the fire again, and added salt, chopped green coriander leaves, dried mango powder and garam masala powder to the dish and let the dish simmer for a few minutes and the dish was ready. And how!
So far so good. My dear friend who is an avid cook wanting to learn how to make and eat Indian food came on chat after a while and I told her what I had cooked. She could not understand what Kabuli Chana was and so I told her that the English name for the dish would be Chick Peas in tomato gravy. Being the grand jester that she is, she promptly asked me how I can make a chick pee.
Any ideas anyone?