Chana Chaat

Name: Chana Chaat
Total time: 20 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Indian
Ingredients: Tinned chickpeas; Fat-free Greek yoghurt; Tamarind; Onion; Cherry tomatoes; Fresh coriander; Green chillies; Ground cumin; Dried chilli flakes

360 kcal a serving, against 404 for the traditional version. That is 44 kcal off, or 11%, with 21.8g of protein. Serves 4. 20 minutes.

What the traditional version is

A popular street food dish built on a base of tinned chickpeas and soft boiled potatoes. It's typically drenched in a sweetened yoghurt, covered in a sticky tamarind and sugar chutney, and finished with raw onions and fresh coriander.

What changed, and what each change costs

300g of boiled potatoes for an extra 400g of tinned chickpeas

Potatoes are pure starch that drag the whole dish down and dilute the main ingredient. Chickpeas are the star anyway, so increasing their volume fills the physical gap left by the potato. A focused pulse salad with a firm bite, then. Not a complex carbohydrate overload anymore, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

What it costs you. You lose the soft, fluffy texture of the potatoes which traditionally breaks up the chewiness of the chickpeas. The dish becomes uniformly firm, which can feel a bit monotonous if you're used to the original.

150g of whole milk yoghurt for 250g of fat-free Greek yoghurt

Standard yoghurt is fine, but Greek yoghurt is strained, meaning it brings a much thicker texture and a massive hit of dairy without the associated fat. It binds the dry ingredients together brilliantly and stops the salad from becoming a watery soup at the bottom of the bowl.

What it costs you. Fat-free Greek yoghurt lacks the rich, rounded mouthfeel of the full-fat version. It tastes sharper and slightly more chalky, lacking that luxurious creaminess.

25g of sugar dumped entirely from the tamarind dressing

Tamarind chutney on the street is essentially a dark syrup. By mixing pure tamarind paste with a little cold water and relying on the cherry tomatoes for a burst of natural sweetness, you kill the empty sugars completely.

What it costs you. The resulting dressing is aggressively tart. If you have a sweet tooth, this lack of sugar will make your eyes water. You have to actually like brutally sour flavours to enjoy this bowl.

What goes in it

The ingredients, without the quantities. The weights are what the figures below are computed from, and they are in the book.

Tinned chickpeas
Fat-free Greek yoghurt
Tamarind
Onion
Cherry tomatoes
Fresh coriander
Green chillies
Ground cumin
Dried chilli flakes

How it starts

Drain and rinse the tinned chickpeas thoroughly under cold running water.
Finely dice the onion and quarter the cherry tomatoes.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk the tamarind paste with 15ml of cold water, the ground cumin, and the chilli flakes until you have a smooth, thin liquid.

The rest of the method, and every weight, is in Authentic-ish Indian.

The numbers

Per serving	Traditional	Lightened
Calories	404	360
Protein	17.1g	21.8g
Fat	6.9g	6.5g
Saturated fat	1.3g	0.6g
Carbohydrate	72.2g	57.4g
Protein per 100 kcal	4.2g	6.1g

Every figure is computed from the recipe's own weighed ingredient list against public food composition databases. The appendix in Authentic-ish Indian prints the exact database row used for each ingredient, so any number here can be checked. How every number is computed sets out the method.

Allergens. milk.

The method is in the book

People look at a chickpea salad and assume it needs no changes. They completely ignore the huge volumes of sugar and starch hiding in the traditional bowl. By ditching the potato and the syrup, and leaning heavily on strained yoghurt, I've built an aggressively tart, incredibly filling starter. It bites back, and I absolutely love it.

The quantities and the method for this dish are in Authentic-ish Indian, along with 54 more. Buy the paperback