Enjoying a soul fulfilling meal is a way to celebrate life.
This recipe is for those days when your heart wishes to be served with a lip smacking meal, something which gives a feeling of having a junk food but is not a junk food, which satiates all taste buds and most importantly does not upset the already sensitive digestive system. This dish has sweet, spicy, tangy all of these flavours. The aroma of pan frying of the potato patties makes you feel as if you are visiting a burger place. Yet it is super healthy, protein packed from the goodness of pumpkin and chickpea loaded with flavours coming from various sauces and fresh ingredients which go into it. The sauces are sugar free and the condiments make it full of nutrients and fibre rich. All this makes it a perfect dish to be served even for special dinners. The colours on the plate itself is such a pleasure to ones eyes.
But please note, this recipe takes a bit of time in the kitchen, but the end result is worth all the work.
This recipe is a healthy rendition of a famous mouth watering Indian street food called chole tikki. However, many changes have been made to make it gluten free, sugar free without compromising on the flavours.
As always said, these recipes can always be tweaked to one’s comfort.
So let’s start learning how to cook potato patties in chickpea pumpkin stew.
Ingredients:

For green chutney:
– coriander/cilantro – 3-4 small bunches
– green chilli(optional) – 1 inch piece
– ginger – 1 inch piece
– salt – to taste
– lemon juice – few drops
– cumin powder – 1 tsp

For dates chutney:
– dates – 4-5 pieces
– cumin powder – 1 tsp
– water – 1/4 cup

 Recipe:
For stew:
1. Put soaked chickpeas, pumpkin, potato slice, salt, turmeric and 5 cups of water in a pressure cooker.
2. Switch on the gas to medium to high flame and let water come to first boil after which close the lid and let the pressure build up. Switch off the gas after around 8-10 whistles.
3. Let the cooker cool naturally.
4. We can use this time to chop vegetables finely for the end part and prepare chutneys. It is better to prepare patty at the end as they will stay hot and crispy.
5. To prepare green chutney – Wash and chop coriander. Put coriander, chilli, ginger, salt, cumin powder and some lemon juice in a blender with 1-2 table spoon of water. Blend until you get a fine paste. Don’t add a lot of water at one go in the blender as it will hinder in fine grinding of the ingredients. Add bit by bit after checking is better. Taste it. You can adjust salt and lemon and green chilli according to desired taste.
6. To prepare dates chutney: Finely chop dates and soak them in 1/4 cups of water for 10-15 mins. After 10 mins, put them in blender, add cumin powder and blend it into a fine paste. You can add some water according to the fineness and consistency needed.
7. By now the pressure cooker should be completely cool, open it and check for the doneness of the chickpeas. In case the chickpeas are nicely cooked, mash everything to make coarse slurry. Here, we can add 1/2 cup of water to make it  like a thick soup.
8. If they need to be cooked more then add some more water for eg. 2 cups if they are half or 3/4th done and let them cook again. Recheck for their doneness after they are cooked.
9. In the meantime, grate potato and sweet potato. If you are allergic to potato or avoiding it for some reason sweet potato can be used.
10. Add 2 tsp of rice flour and salt to taste.
11. Using hands mix them together and make 4 balls.
12. In a small plate spread some rice flour. Slightly flatten the potato balls we made on the rice flour and smear rice flour on all sides of the patty. This will make the patty skin crispy.
13. In a pan,  spread 2-3 tsp of oil and cover the pan to let it get warm evenly. When it is decently warm put the patties on the pan. Keep the flame on lower side but not very low. Add few drops of oil around the patty and let it fry slowly. The kitchen will be smelling very nice now. Smear few drops of oil on the top side of the patty and when one side is nicely brown flip the other side down to get seared.
14. Finally let’s set the dish in totality. First pour 1-2 ladles of  hot chickpea soup. Put 2 potato patties on it. Over it generously drizzle 2-3 tsp of green chutney and dates chutney. Garnish with liberal amounts of finely chopped tomato, onion, pomegranate, coriander and fresh green chillies. Finish with sprinkling of 2 tsp of cumin powder, 1 tsp of black salt (if available) else normal salt is ok and squeeze some lemon juice on the top.
15. Enjoy this when its steaming hot.

There are some more variations which can be brought if you can have dairy and gluten. If yoghurt is fine then lemon juice at the end can be replaced by drizzling 1-2 tsp of yoghurt. If you are fine with gluten then please do add some crisps on the top to add the crunch. If chilli causes irritation in the gut then they can be avoided. If you have dry ginger powder at hand then pls add 1 tsp in dates sauce.