Chana Batura is an Indian tomato and chickpea stew served with a big puffy bread-like item. It's one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten. My old boss was from India and when we would have meetings around lunchtime, we would stop at this little Indian restaurant just north of Atlanta and we'd have lunch. Every time I went I got a different meal because I just couldn't find anything I wanted to try twice.. until I tried Chana Batura. I started a new job this week and will miss my Indian lunches very much, so of course the only logical thing to do was learn to make it myself. I looked at a lot of recipes (and had to translate a few of them) and finally just decided to mush them all together and wing it... as usual.
I started off by browning some onions. In hindsight, I could've used a LOT more onions. I love onions. I let them brown up for a minute and then added a little minced ginger and garlic.
The spices were the hard part for me. I don't generally keep jars of coriander or cumin or really any spices used in Indian cooking. Luckily, spice companies know about people like me and sell Garam Masala, a mixture of various ground spices. It can include peppercorns, cloves, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, star anise and coriander. I would have had only the peppercorns and the cinnamon. So I bought a jar. It may not be the exact proportions the recipe called for, but it'll be closer than if I had nothing.
So that's a lot of garam masala on the left mixed with some tumeric and cayenne pepper. I don't remember the exact amounts because I added some extra while it was cooking because I felt like it. Luckily cooking isn't as exact as baking.
I added the spices to the oil/onion/ginger/garlic mixture and let the spices toast a little.
Then I added a can of diced tomatoes. I'm not a big fan of chunks of tomatoes, so I probably would've been happier with a can of smaller diced tomatoes or just tomato sauce. Just kidding.. maybe.
I let the tomatoes cook for a while until the liquid thickened up a little and then added the drained chickpeas. I kept getting confused because every recipe I was finding was telling me to cook the chickpeas in a pressure cooker and that seemed odd. Then I finally stumbled across a recipe that explained that cans of chickpeas (I didn't realize they came any other way) are already cooked, but a typical Indian family would probably have bags of uncooked chickpeas. Since I didn't have uncooked chickpeas or a pressure cooker and I DID have a can of precooked chickpeas, it worked out perfectly.
This mixture just simmers for about 10 minutes or until the stew has thickened up. I wish I'd let mine thicken a little more. I don't even want to call it a stew because it's supposed to be a fairly dry meal.
Then serve it hot with bread. Bhatura is apparently the typical choice, but it's not something I'm willing to try making when a pita will suffice. (I'm sure there's an Indian chef rolling in his grave at that.) Bhatura is a flour and potato dough that's rolled out and fried. It puffs up and is served hot. When you puncture it, the steam inside escapes and it collapses in on itself. It's really very cool. But truly, a pita does taste delicious with it.
Although, served without Bhatura, I believe the name is Chana Masala? I'm clearly not an expert.
I might venture back up to that restaurant from time to time to eat the real stuff, but this version is so flavorful and easy to make that I think I'll survive.
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