Chole Bhature - Indian spicy chickpea stew and Indian puffed fried bread

Spicy comfort food

Mar 01, 2025

∙ Paid

One of the many reasons why I enjoy being part of an international organization is because I have the opportunity to work with people who come from all over the world. Getting to know them and their culture is an incredible experience that helps me grow in more ways than one. It broadens my mind as well as my view of the world and its inhabitants.
We all have things in common no matter where we come from and of course, one of the things we all share is food. Having the opportunity to learn about the food culture of different countries through my colleagues is extraordinary. And sometimes those friends and colleagues also know how to cook. Some of them are very good at it.

Having the privilege to eat in their homes, see how they set the table, how they serve the food, their rituals of eating, isn’t only a culinary experience but also a cultural one. It is so exciting to be able to share it with them and I always enjoy inviting them to my own home as well and giving them a glimpse of the way Greeks eat.

Having long talks with some of them about food, recipes and ingredients from their home countries is such a valuable learning experience that I couldn’t get from cookbooks or blogs. Some of them are willing to share their recipes, others are tight-lipped and secretive about revealing anything but the names of dishes and a few are willing to share the secrets to a dish. A former colleague of mine from India did share with me the secrets to one of her beloved recipes, chole bhature, a chickpea stew served with puffed bread.

Chole refers to the chickpea stew (also referred to as chana masala) and bhature is the puffed fried bread. I helped her cook this dish at her home once and I learned first hand how to make the stew and the bread. I loved it! It was vibrant, sumptuous and astonishingly hot. I have never eaten anything hotter in my whole life and even though I enjoy spicy food, I had trouble eating that one. She was laughing the whole time I was fanning my mouth with a magazine with every bite I took and she kept insisting that it wasn’t too hot and that she usually adds more chillies. I was stunned!! More chillies than this??

She wrote down her recipe for me and of course I had to adapt it to my own palate, adding far less chillies and also substituting the Kashmiri chilli, a common type of chilli powder used in Indian cooking, for regular dried chilli powder because I couldn’t find any. I have to admit that the recipe yielded a very hot chole but one that I can tolerate.
I’ve been making this recipe ever since and it has become a staple in my home. My boyfriend loves it and I have cooked it for my family in Greece and they all love it too. It is a highly aromatic and flavorful dish, with the soft, plump chickpeas and a rich, dense sauce that is perfect to eat with the bhature, that wonderful puffed up bread which is, admittedly, a bit heavy since it is fried, but also crispy and soft and utterly addictive. My friend’s bhature was better than mine, hers had that perfect puffed up dome and was a bit crispier, but I think I’m getting better at it. Practice makes perfect, right?