Chickpea Flour Stew with Dumplings (Karhi)

Main or side, that is a question. With yogurt and gram flour, it must be high in protein, so makes a nice vegetarian main. But it's suggested as a kind of side, served with lamb kebabs. Although I'm not really sure that "side" is a concept applied to an Indian meal.

I made a half recipe (of 6 servings) as a vegetarian main, thinking we'd have enough extra for tomorrow's lunch. It was awfully good and we were feeling piggy, so we ate the last bit without rice to go under it. Strangely, the sauce in this bit seemed to both of us to have more flavor than when it was initially served. Maybe it liked the wait?

Even though I made a half recipe, I used all the spices, and would do that again. But I skipped a halving gear when it got to the dumplings, so ended up making all of those. Which was a lot, but neither of us complained. (Needs two or three batches to fry them all.)

I mixed the dumplings in the food processor rather than vigorously beating for 10 minutes. I'd already thought about this when I noticed that Sahni, in a similar recipe in Classic Indian Cooking gave a procedure using the food processor. It worked fine. Sahni also has you adding a bit of ground coriander to the dumpling mix, which might be a nice addition.

Because you can make both the sauce (karhi) and the dumplings ahead of time and reheat together before serving, this could make a nice company dish.