R053Vanpayar Thoran
Brown cowpea with grated coconut
R055
Kadala Ularthiyathu
Black chickpea, roasted dry with coconut slivers
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
Plan ahead: plus 8–12 hours soaking and 20 minutes pressure-cooking — required.
The re-engineeringCoconut oil down from about 40 g to 10 g and coconut slivers from 120 g to 60 g. The dryness comes from reducing the masala completely and roasting in the pan's own heat — the same technique as R048, applied to a pulse instead of to beef, and for a quarter of the fat.
Kadala — the small dark Bengal gram, the whole black chickpea — carries 25.2 g of fibre per 100 g dry, which is the highest of any pulse in the Kerala pantry by a wide margin, and more than four times the fibre of a comparable weight of oats. It is usually met in kadala curry with morning puttu. This is the other thing to do with it: a dry roast, dark and nutty, that eats like a snack and sits on a plate like a main dish. If R048 is this chapter's argument about meat, this is its answer.
Before you start: Sliver the coconut — thin pieces about 2 cm long, thenga kothu — rather than grating it. Grated coconut disappears; slivers stay as texture, and texture is the dish.
Kadala Ularthiyathu
Active 25 minutes Total 40 minutes
Scale
4 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓200 g (1 cup) kadala (black chickpea), soaked 8–12 hours
- ✓2 g (⅓ tsp) ground turmeric, for the cooking water
- ✓10 g (2 tsp) coconut oil
- ✓3 g (½ tsp) mustard seed
- ✓60 g (about ⅔ cup) fresh coconut, in thin slivers
- ✓100 g (about 10) shallots, sliced
- ✓25 fresh curry leaves
- ✓20 g (1 tbsp) ginger-garlic-green chilli paste (M16)
- ✓5 g (1 tbsp) ground coriander
- ✓4 g (¾ tsp) coarsely crushed black pepper
- ✓3.5 g (⅔ tsp) 70:30 salt (M07)
- ✓3 g (½ tsp) Kerala garam masala (M01)
Allergens: Mustard. Sesame or peanuts — whichever of the two oils you use (it reaches the dish through M16).
Equipment: Pressure cooker; heavy 26 cm pan or cheena chatti; flat wooden turner. Substitute: an open pot for the chickpeas, 1¼–1½ hours. A thin pan will burn the coconut slivers before the chickpeas dry.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 260 kcal |
| Protein | 11 g |
| Fibre | 16 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 26 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 42 g |
| Sugars | 8 g |
| Fat | 12 g |
| Saturated fat | 8 g |
| Sodium | 260 mg |
From ICMR-NIN IFCT 2017 and USDA FoodData Central. Per-serving figures stay the same when you scale.
Method — tap a step to mark it done, tap a time to start a timer
- Drain the soaked chickpeas, discard the water, and pressure-cook in 500 ml fresh water with the turmeric for at full pressure. Release naturally. In a pot, 1¼–1½ hours.
- Test and drain thoroughly. A cooked kadala should be tender all the way through but still firm enough to keep its round shape when pressed — it should give, not squash. Drain hard and let the chickpeas steam-dry in the colander for ; surface water is what stops them roasting.
- Heat the oil in the pan over medium heat, add the mustard seed and wait for it to pop, 30–45 seconds.
- Add the coconut slivers and cook, stirring, until they turn from white to the colour of pale toast, . Then add the shallots and curry leaves and cook until the shallots are soft and gilded, .
- Add the M16 and cook 90 seconds, until the raw garlic smell has gone. Then the coriander and pepper, for 45 seconds, until they smell toasted.
- Fold in the chickpeas and the salt. Raise the heat and roast, turning with the wooden turner every 30 seconds, until the masala has dried onto the chickpeas as a dark crust, the coconut is deep brown and the pan sounds dry rather than wet, .
- Add the M01 off the heat and toss 30 seconds. Best eaten warm; genuinely good cold.
Why this worksBlack chickpea keeps its cell walls and its thick seed coat intact through cooking, which is why 26 g of net carbohydrate here behaves so differently from 26 g from rice — the starch is physically enclosed, and the 16 g of fibre per serving slows gastric emptying on top of that. The dry roast then dehydrates the surface of each chickpea so the masala can crust rather than coat, which is the same physics as R048 and needs the same thing: all the free water gone first.
Sourcing note
Black chickpea is sold as kala chana, desi chana, Bengal gram whole or brown chickpea, and it is a different, smaller, tougher, far higher-fibre bean than the pale kabuli chickpea used in hummus. Buy the black one for this dish; kabuli will work but goes floury and the skins slip off in the roast. Tinned chickpeas are usually kabuli and are too soft for this technique. Do not skip the overnight soak — an unsoaked kadala takes 45 minutes under pressure and cooks unevenly.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 16 g of fibre in a single serving is more than most people manage in a day, and 26 g of net carbohydrate at a category glycaemic index of 34 gives an estimated glycaemic load near 9. This is the single most useful dish in the chapter to put beside rice.
Blood pressure: 260 mg, from 3.5 g of salt across four servings.
Cholesterol: 8 g of saturated fat, of which about 5.5 g is the coconut slivers and 1.8 g the coconut oil. Cutting the slivers to 40 g takes it to about 6 g. Set against that, pulses at around 130 g a day lowered LDL cholesterol by about 6.6 mg/dL in 26 randomised trials (Ha et al., 2014).
Swap it
Sesame or groundnut oil for the coconut oil → saturated fat to about 6.5 g per serving. Worth doing here; the slivers, not the oil, are the coconut flavour.
Cashews for the slivers → 40 g, chopped. Less saturated fat, more monounsaturated. (Allergen: this swap introduces tree nuts (cashew).)
Vanpayar or cherupayar → 200 g dry, cooked to their own timings. Both roast well; neither has kadala's fibre.
Add 200 g of diced green plantain at step 4 → six servings and a fuller plate, in the manner of a koottukari.
Make ahead · store · freeze
Cook and drain the chickpeas up to four days ahead — this is the whole make-ahead. Fridge 4 days finished. Freeze 3 months, cooked chickpeas plain or the finished dish; both survive well, because there is no emulsion. Reheat in a dry pan, 3–4 minutes, until it sizzles.
Leftovers
Eat it cold, by the handful, instead of a packet of anything. Or fold it into R062 sprouted moong salad, or stir it through leftover rice with lime and raw onion.
Troubleshooting
Skins everywhere and floury insides: those were kabuli chickpeas, or the kadala was cooked 5 minutes too long.
Chickpeas still hard after full pressure: the soak was short, or the pulses are old. Another 8 minutes; if still hard, they are too old.
Masala pasty rather than crusted: the chickpeas went in wet, or the flame was too low at step 6. Steam-dry them in the colander first.
Serve with
R004 Puttu · R015 Matta Rice · R040 Nadan Kozhi Curry · R048 Beef Ularthiyathu
Tap a star to rate this recipe
