Karri (chickpea/gram flour curry with dumplings)

Ingredients

• For Gravy:-
• ¼ cup of gram flour/ chick pea flour
• 500gms of yogurt cultured (sour)
• Handful of fresh curry leaves
• ½ tsp of mustard seeds
• 1 tbsp of turmeric powder
• 1 tsp of red chilli powder
• 3 tsp of cumin seeds slightly roasted and grounded
• 5-6 cloves of finely chopped garlic
• 4 green chillies
• 3 tbsp of onion
• Salt to taste
• 1/4 cup of oil
• For dumplings :-
• ½ cup of chick peas
• 4 tbsp of water
• ½ tsp of baking powder
• ½ tsp of chaat masala
• ½ tsp crushed roasted cumin seeds
• ½ tsp of crushed chilli flakes
• Salt to taste

Method

Step 1

For Gravy:-Heat ¼ cup of oil in a deep pot, add garlic, onions, and green chillies till golden and add the mixture of chick peas and yogurt and constantly stir, then add turmeric, chilli powder, cumin powder, salt and stir. Be careful not to burn the curry or letting it stick to bottom. Add water, cover it and leave it to cook on low flame for 30 minutes.

Step 2

For making Dumplings:- Mix the ingredients of dumpling in a smooth paste without lumps, it should a thick batter (ribbon like consistency) not too runny so that the dumpling stay in round shapes and don’t split during deep frying, leave the mixture to rest for 10 minutes. Heat oil in a pan, take a spoon dip it in batter. Take out a spoonful of batter and drop it in hot oil (three in a batch is fine), let them cook till golden brown from all sides, then drain them, now do another batch. Don’t put too many otherwise the temperature of oil will drop and the dumplings will not present with a nice round shape and will be unevenly cooked. Put the dumplings in the cooked gravy.

Step 3

For tarka (tempering) Heat oil in a pan, put curry leaves, mustard seeds, finely chopped green chilli (optional). Till you hear crackling and smell the aroma, pour it over the curry with dumpling and let it cook for 5 minutes. Then remove from flame. Serve Kari with plain rice or with naan bread.

Tips

If the batter splits in oil it means it’s too thin, add in small quantity of gram flour to make it thicker. The longer the batter is whipped the fluffy the dumplings will come out. Sometimes the dumplings after frying are placed in a bowl of salty warm water for a minute. After a minute, excess water is squeezed out of the dumplings. Then the dumplings are transferred in the gravy. This is done to avoid lumps in middle of dumplings.