This One’s For You, Samvit

If you haven’t been paying attention to the news lately, allow me to fill you in: the election between an authoritarian narcissist with a soft spot for white supremacists and a mediocre has-been who is about as Conservative as a Democrat can get is rapidly approaching, the pandemic that continues to sweep the country has claimed 200,000 lives, and much of the West Coast is currently on fire. In fact, much of my county has been on fire, and my world is (until very recently) draped in thick, noxious smoke.

For many, this is a completely new and frightening experience – it certainly was for me. For about 72 hours, we were on Level 1 evacuation, meaning it “would be wise to consider packing“.

But the smoke and unhealthy air quality made me kinda nostalgic reminding me of somewhere I spent a few weeks about 4 years ago…

Because looking out the window reminded me of India, it actually made me hungry for Indian food. So I decided to make one of my favorite dishes from my time there: chole bhature. While in Udaipur (13 hours north of Mumbai), our friendly host Samvit, with whom we spent a lot of time, introduced us to this dish one evening.

Chole bhature is pretty straightforward: it’s chana masala (chickpeas cooked in tomatoes with lots of spices, almost like chili) served with bhatura, a bread that is deep-fried instead of baked that inflates like a balloon when deep-fried. It originates in Northern India, but has a bunch of regional differences, including in Pakistan where a similar dish is eaten for breakfast. Without further ado, let’s get cooking.

First thing we’re gonna do is make our bhatura, our bread, which calls for an unusual bunch of ingredients.

About the Cream of Wheat – the prefered breakfast of infants and Maya – it’s actually just a brand of farina, which, in turn, is wheat semolina. Wheat semolina is a flour often used to make pasta, and for some reason it can not be found at the store here. So I discovered that Cream of Wheat is a suitable substitute. But that’s not even the weirdest thing that goes into our dough.

While that rises we’re gonna start on our chana masala.

Two pounds of chickpeas (which we soaked overnight) go into a pressure cooker with a few black tea bags (for color I think), some bay leaves, cardamom, a few cinnamon sticks, a generous pinch of salt and 4 to 5 cups of water.

While that’s cooking, let’s get our onions going with some oil in a hot wok. We wanna cook them until they take on some color and start to look nice.

Once our onions are looking nice, we’re gonna add some minced garlic and ginger and let that cook up.

Now we’re gonna throw in the main ingredient: our tomatoes. Let some of the water in the tomatoes cook off, maybe 12-15 minutes.

Now it’s time to finally add our tea and herb-steamed chickpeas (by far the weirdest way I have ever cooked chickpeas – I wonder what it would taste like if you made hummus out of them).

That’s gonna simmer for about an hour and yep you guessed it – we’re thickening it by cooking off the excess water. In the meantime, let’s make some quick pickled onions. We heat vinegar, maple syrup, and salt in a saucepan, and pour it in a jar filled with chopped red onions, making sure to screw the lid on tight. The heat speeds up the pickling process, and these only need about 30 minutes before they’re nice and pickled.

Now, at long last, let’s tackle the bhatura.

I chose to break out an old favorite on this blog – the absurdly tiny rolling pin.

But instead of baking these like you usually would bread, they’re headed into a Le Creuset filled with ripping-hot vegetable oil. Observe the magical transformation below:

Time to plate up – into a serving vessel of your choice goes our chana masala, our pickled onions, a dash of coriander chutney, and our beautiful bhatura.

Does it look like the one I had in India? Not exactly, but that’s okay. They’ve been doing it for years, and this is my first time. Their bread was lighter and puffier than mine, but I tell myself they have access to equipment not present in a home kitchen.

Overall, this was fantastic. The chana masala is incredibly warming, and the range of flavors created by all the spices is deep and magical. The pickled onions add some crunch, acidity, and sweetness. The chutney is nice and spicy. Our bhatura is fluffy on the inside like a soft pretzel or a challah, yet inflatable just like the ones in India. Though it looks like a dry, puffy balloon, it’s actually moist on the inside – I think it’s the result of the yogurt that went into our dough. The one drawback is that I didn’t cook the chickpeas enough and they were a little raw.

Making this is definitely worth your time if you have a free day and are tired of monotonous quarantine dinners. Just make sure to cook the chickpeas more than I did.