Michelle's Punjabi Chole.

Hello to readers of my blog. Am sorry for the guest appearances I have been giving. Its just that managing two blogs seems quite hard and am giving more attention to the other fellow..Sorry to The Chef. Please do not get angry. I promise to give attention to you too.

  Well, over the New Years, we as a family decided to have more of vegetarian meals. Okay, I made the decision and husband and kids welcomed it with glee. You heard me right. With glee. What? Aren't we Mangy's who love dukra maas and sannas with toddy?? Oh yes we are, but somehow I have children who are more of the Bangy kind, mosaru ana(curd rice) lovers!! They absolutely love veggies. But being the mangy I am, I never mastered the art of cooking exotic vegetarian dishes.

  So when the kilos in me started piling up, thanks to expat life and non availability of a lot of Indian food, we resorted to eating meat everyday. Being the lazy woman I am who hates to exercise, I thought it is now or never. High time to make some changes in our food would be the first step. Which meant, I had to put in more effort to searching recipes and bring about a change in our cuisine. It has been a month, and am happy to report(that I have lost a kilo without exercising..:D) that the change has been good and the family has been relishing the meals. And we do have our share of non vegetarian meals, thrice a week.

 Michelle, a fellow Mangalorean with an awesome food blog, blogged this recipe last week. Chick peas is an all time favorite with the family. I generally prepare it with bafath powder, seasoned with oil, mustard, curry leaves, onions and coconut(this was my own recipe). Her recipe looked tempting enough to try, and here's how it goes...

• 500 gm chick peas, boiled
• 1 large onion, diced fine
• 250gm chopped tomatoes
• 1 tbsp ginger garlic paste
• 2 tbsp oil
• salt to taste

For the masala powder:

• 2 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 inch piece cinnamon
• 3 whole cloves
• 4 green cardamom
• 1 tsp whole black pepper
• 2 dried long red chillies
• 1 big dried bay leaf

Method:

1. Soak the chickpeas overnight. 
2. Boil them in a pressure cooker till soft and keep aside.
3. Put all the spices on a tawa and roast them well, stirring constantly.
4. Powder them fine in a mixer. 
5. In a kadhai, heat oil and cook the onion till color changes. Add the ginger garlic paste and continue to fry for another minute.
6. Add the tomatoes to the mixture and cook well till the onion and tomatoes become a thick paste.
7. Add the ground spice powder, bay leaf and salt to taste. Cook on a slow flame, stirring for about 10-15  minutes, until the masala is fairly dry.
8. Add the chickpeas along with the water and stir together gently. Simmer for 5 minutes. Garnish with spring onions and serve hot with roti or rice.

Michelle, looks like the bafath powder is going to have to take a backseat for a while. The Chole with the blend of spices was perfect to beat the winter blues.