Chana Masala

Ingredients: Serves 4 easily

3 Tablespoons desi ghee

1 bay leaf

2 cloves

1 black cardamom

2 inch cinnamon

1 dried red chilli

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

2 medium onion roughly chopped

1 inch ginger finely chopped or paste

5-6 slices of garlic, finely chopped or paste

2 medium tomatoes roughly chopped

Salt and red chilli powder to taste

½ teaspoon turmeric powder

3 tablespoon packed chana masala, easily available at any grocery store.

Water as required

2 cups white chana, also known as kabuli chana or chickpeas. Pre soaked in water, overnight is better.

Recipe:

In a pressure cooker, add ghee, cumin seeds, cloves, bay leaf, dried red chilli, cardamom and cinnamon. Fry these till you start smelling their aroma in the air. Keep flame on medium as we donot want our dry spices to burn.

Add onion and fry till they turn pink in color and their raw smell has gone away. Then add ginger, garlic and stir it for another couple of minutes. We don’t want the ginger and garlic to turn brown, just want to remove their rawness.

Add tomatoes, salt, turmeric, chana masala and fry the mixture till tomatoes have turned soggy, and oil starts to separate from the masala. Stir occasionally during this.

Taste the masala and add some chilli powder if it needs a little bit of heat. I personally add around 1/8 teaspoon of chilli powder at this stage.

Now add soaked chana and mix nicely but gently so chana doesn’t break into halves.

Add water till 2 cm above the level of chana. Give a nice stir, and taste the water, add salt if it needs any more. I believe that secret to a great dish is constant tasting at every stage as it helps in understanding how it is turning out and what else does it needs.

Close the cooker with its lid. Turn the flame to its highest level. And after three whistles of the cooker turn the heat to lowest and leave the cooker to simmer for next 10 minutes. Then turn off the flame. And leave the cooker as it is till it releases all the pressure on its own. It may take another 5 – 10 minutes. Then open the cooker, everything should have amalgamated by now, check some chickpea, if they are completely soggy and getting easily squished by hand or spoon, chana masala is ready. If not, put them back on flame and let the cooker whistle again for once only and recheck.

Now all is left is for you to decide on 2 things. One, how much gravy do you want. If you want chana masala to be runny then add more water and bring it to a boil and then chana masala will be ready for you. Two is whether you like your chana a little mashed or not. I like to mash my chana masala a little as it mixes the flavour of chana with masala making it more delicious, preference is yours completely.

Garnish them with some fresh coriander or green chillies or ginger juliennes. Serve them hot with rice/ puri/ bhatura/ paratha or chapatti.

Note:

Longer the chana has pre-soaked in water, lesser will be their cooking time in pressure cooker. I had chana soaking in water for around 3 hours, and it took 5 whistles of the cooker to get perfectly cooked chana.

Cooking time also varies as per the pressure cooker. So please donot blindly follow the above mentioned pressure cooking procedure and adapt it as per your cooker.

Follow the same recipe and make delicious rajma. Instead of chana use rajma, and in place of chana masala add rajma masala.