Matar Kulcha

February came and February went. The entire month just whizzed past without a single post on this blog. In fact I haven’t been off to a very good start to The Singing Chef this year. While my other blog has seen a post, OK, a picture, a day, two months in 2010 have gone by with just one post here. I have been cooking. I’ve been cooking a whole lot more than I normally do. I haven’t been cooking too many new things. In fact, I’ve been looking to my own blog to recreate some of the dishes I’d made earlier and had promptly forgotten about once I posted them on the blog.

A fellow marathoner, Divya, is hosting this month’s Tried & Tasted event. This is an event started by Zlamushka and I am very happy to let you all know that The Singing Chef is the chosen blog for March 2010. I hope you will all enjoy going through this blog and cooking some of my favourites. Thanks for the logo, Ksenia.

I visited my folks in Bangalore earlier this year and did some cooking there: Parottas and kurma, dosakaya pachadi, wheat flour dosas and carrot soup. I also baked my parents a carrot cake. I haven’t done much baking apart from that and have only made one batch of banana nut muffins.


I’ve been cooking a lot of traditional food as my in-laws are visiting us right now. Breakfast has been semia upma, sabudana khichdi, batat phow, etc. Lunch and dinner are stuff like khichdi and kadhi, radish and shallot vathal kuzhambu, aloo gobi, adraki dal, turnip and onion sambar, tomato rasam, brinjal curry, onion thuvayal, carrot thuvayal, zucchini thuvayal, chow chow kootu, etc. Some recipes will be up on the blog soon.


One of the dishes that I made at home for the first time this year was the famous street food of Delhi: Matar Kulcha. I’ve eaten it several times, but had never bothered to find out how it is made. I bought some kulchas from the supermarket in the hope that they would help me with dinner on a day that my cab takes me home really late. Then I found a bag of dried peas and soaked a cupful hoping to make sundal for breakfast. During the cab ride back home, I suddenly put two and two together and decided that I could make matar kulcha if only I figured out the recipe for the matar. My cab mate told me it was the simplest thing to make and taught me how to make this. The original street food version is made with dehydrated yellow peas, but I used green instead.


1 cup Dry Yellow/Green Peas, soaked overnight and cooked
2 Onions, finely chopped
2 Tomatoes, finely chopped
2 Green Chillies, finely chopped
¼ cup Coriander Leaves, finely chopped
1 tsp Ginger, finely chopped
¼ tsp Garam Masala
1 tsp Chat Masala
Juice of 1 Lime / 1 tsp Amchur/ 1 tsp Tamarind Paste
Salt/ Black Salt to taste


To Serve:
6 Kulchas/ Bread slices
1 Onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp Coriander Leaves, finely chopped
Lime Wedges



Mix all the ingredients while the cooked peas are still hot. The final consistency of the dish should have the peas in a mushy form. Garnish with onions and coriander leaves and some lime wedges. Toast each kulcha on both sides on a hot skillet for a minute or so on low heat and serve with the peas mixture.



If you have kulchas or bread with you, and remember to soak the peas when you leave for work, this is your perfect dinner item. While the peas are cooking, you can do all the prep work and your meal will be ready before you know it.