Masala Puri

Spice is what you need when it’s hot. The heat makes your body work to cool itself down. It’s like turning your interior freezer to ‘ON’. Indian food is the perfect balance of heat and less heat. Cool yogurt, fresh cucumbers, cooked beans and spices. Every spice for a different purpose, and sometimes every spice at once. Like here, with this masala puri recipe.

So with my very refreshing mint chutney I made this…
There’s no actual puri bread here, since I had just made gluten-free bread (which is completely different. Puri is a slightly sweet flatbread and mine was a yeast bread, but I just put the masala on a bed of lettuce. There is potato in the dish anyway, so it’s not lacking for carbohydrates. I mixed some of the chutney in and I served some on top as well, along with some thick yogurt (actually, kefir, but it’s very similar). The sweetness of the dairy was perfect with the surprising sweetness of the masala.
Ingredients:
3 small (or 2 medium) potatoes (peeled, boiled and mashed coarsely, or roasted, peeled and mashed. I happened to have the oven turned on so I just threw the potatoes in whole, unseasoned, pricked them all over with a fork so they wouldn’t explode, and stuck them directly on the oven bars for about 50 minutes. Just leave them until they’re tender. Then peel off the skin once they cool. You can also boil them and then peel and mash the same way)

1/2 cup dried chickpeas (soaked in water for about 6-8 hrs, or overnight. Or you can cover them with 1 1/2 cups water, bring a pot of the chickpeas and water to a boil on the stove, boil 3 minutes, and then cover and let stand for an hour. OR just used canned, but the taste is not the same)

1 – big onion, chopped finely, but it doesn’t have to be too precise unless you care about such things
1 tsp oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
3/4 tsp garam masala (home-made is best)
3/4 tsp chaat masala (again, home-made is best and recipe to come. Mmm…mango powder)
1 tsp tamarind paste or a lime-sized piece of tamarind pulp soaked in warm water for 30 minutes (I just left it in the water for about an hour. Then what you do is take the ball of tamarind and press it through a fine sieve. Then pulp that come out is what you want to use. Throw away the fibres that don’t get pushed through)
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp red chili powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/4 cup mint chutney
cilantro, for garnish
1 tomato, chopped into small pieces
salt to taste

So you need to cook the chickpeas. If you just did the quick soak method with the whole ‘letting it sit for an hour after boiling for 3 minutes’ thing, you now need to drain the chickpeas, rinse them in cold water to wash off some of the starch that gets stuck on them, and then put them back in the pot with about 3 cups of water. Bring THAT to a boil, cover, reduce the heat, and let the chickpeas simmer for 80 minutes. I got away with 65 minutes, but my bean bible says 80. It’s your digestive tract, though, so do what you will.

When the beans are done, just drain them away and rinse again. Yes, you are allowed to just use canned chickpeas, but trust me, it’s just not the same. There’ll be a starchy, slightly acidic taste and they won’t be as nutty and sweet as fresh beans will be. They really should taste a bit like tahini (sesame paste) for hummous, but without adding any. Anyway, enough about chickpeas. The can is easy and convenient (thus, North American), but the fresh method is more delicious (thus, Indian. Though I know lots of Indian-Canadians who cheat).

Heat the oil in a big pot over medium-high heat, and when it’s hot add the cumin seeds. Don’t spread the oil around. Keep it in one area of the pot and then add the seeds directly to the oil. It infuses the oil better this way without adding heaps of it.

Now add the onion, and stir and cook for about 5 minutes, or until the onion is soft. I under-cooked my onion (again! I always do this by accident, since there’s not as much oil as there could be) so test it and make sure it’s not still crunchy before going on to the next step. It’ll ruin the final texture of the dish.

Now add the chickpeas and the boiled and mashed potato. You want to do the whole boiling or roasting and mashing thing in advance since you don’t want to be waiting for it to cook and then burn yourself peeling it while it’s still hot. Preferably do this while the chickpeas are cooking. Even smarter would be to use leftover potatoes (unseasoned!!! Sour cream and butter have no place in this recipe).

Now, I don’t know what a “bhaaji consistency” is, but you’re now supposed to add enough water to the pot to create one of these elusive things. Apparently I need to make more bhaaji. This is obviously what I’m doing wrong with my life. I just added enough so that everything got smooth and easy to mix, and then added a bit extra because the recipe recommended erring on the side of slightly soupy. So add about a cup of water. Up to 1 1/2 cups.

Now add the garam masala, the chaat masala, the sieved tamarind, brown sugar, mint chutney (more or less a 1/4 cup, to taste), the red chili powder, and turmeric, bring to a boil, and cook for a few minutes. If the mixture gets too dry, add more water. “Too dry” means “annoying to stir”. It’s easy to boil off excess water at the end, but not easy to fix the recipe if you burn it now. Also, since I undercooked my chickpeas in the first place I thought it would be fine to add more water now to help them along.

Now add a pinch or so of salt and adjust the other seasonings according to taste. Whatever that means. I’ve never made this before, or eaten it, so have no idea what it’s “supposed” to taste like. If you like the taste, leave it as is. If not, add some more of something that has a flavour you think you might want more of, like more brown sugar if it’s not sweet enough, more mint chutney if it needs more herbal freshness, or more tamarind for intense sour. The brown sugar makes this spicy and sweet, which is just wonderful, and all the spices in the garam masala and chaat masala make this a sensory overload for your tongue. I don’t remember the last time my taste buds didn’t know what hit them, like they did with this dish. “Red wine sauce” this, “olive oil and lemon and dijon” that – these are all well and good, but these fresh Indian spices…wow.

To serve this, either take crackers (or real puri bread. Crackers are no comparison, but serve for a good crunch replacement in a fix), or serve as I did with a bed of lettuce. Spoon some of the chickpea mixture on top and then sprinkle with some of the chopped tomato and cilantro. You can add some of the extra mint chutney and yogurt directly on top, or serve it on the side, or not at all. Really, the chickpea and potato mixture is great on its own, or just with bread, and doesn’t need anything else to make it a delicious meal. The lettuce, tomatoes, yogurt and extra mint are all overkill, but they’ll send you into Indian heaven. Well, I mean, it’s a bit more complicated than that, what with all the “Hare Krishnas” if you’re Hindu and other complicated issues if you’re Seekh or Muslim, but the gist is you’ll be pretty happy with your dinner. In the end, isn’t that what we all want out of life?