What You Are Making
At a Mumbai stall the sound is the first clue: a flat iron plate hissing as potato cakes sear, and next to it a deep pot of pale, steaming peas being stirred with a long ladle. Neither part is much alone. The ragda is a humble, loosely mashed stew of dried white peas, and the pattice is a firm spiced potato cake, a close cousin of aloo tikki. Put them in one bowl, hot, and top with sweet-sour chutney, sharp green chutney, raw onion and sev, and you get a third thing altogether.
Aloo tikki chaat is a separate dish: it skips the ragda and puts chutneys and cold yogurt straight onto the cake. The peas ask for one real piece of planning, a night in water, and everything else comes together quickly on the day.
The Dish’s Backstory
The city's twentieth-century chaat and bhel scene, which grew up around suburban railway stations, the sands of Chowpatty and countless neighbourhood carts, many of them run by Gujarati and Maharashtrian families, is where this dish took shape. Its pattice half, a spiced potato cake browned in a pan, clearly shares ancestry with North India's aloo tikki. Most food writers see the whole plate as a Mumbai adaptation: a familiar potato cake matched with a pea gravy that belongs to Maharashtrian and Gujarati home kitchens, rather than a brand-new invention. People tie it to Mumbai in particular, not to the state at large, and beyond the city and its satellite towns it rarely appears in anything close to the original form.
At the Stove, Step by Step
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Prep
Soak the peas, then cook them soft
Cover the dried white peas generously with water and let them stand overnight, eight hours at the very least, until they have swollen to about twice their size. Pressure-cook them with the turmeric in fresh water for five or six whistles, until they slump and begin to split. This is a longer, softer cook than most beans need, because the broken-down peas are what thicken the ragda.
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Cook
Make the seasoned base
In a pot, let cumin seeds and a pinch of asafoetida crackle in hot oil for a few seconds. Stir in the ginger-garlic paste and give it half a minute. Take the pot off the burner for a moment before adding the chilli and coriander powders, which burn easily, then set it back over the flame.
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Cook
Simmer until soupy
Tip in the soft peas along with their cooking water, then add more water until the pot holds a thin, pourable gravy, looser than a dal, because a generous ladleful goes on each plate. Season with salt, let it bubble gently for 15 to 20 minutes, and push a portion of the peas against the pot wall with a spoon to thicken the liquid. Top up with water if it tightens. It must remain plainly soupy, nowhere near the thickness of a curry.
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Prep
Mix and shape the potato cakes
Mash the boiled potatoes smooth, then knead in the cornflour, green chilli, ginger, roasted cumin and salt. Even if the mixture already feels firm, keep the cornflour, since it keeps the cakes from falling apart in the pan. Split the mass into eight and flatten each piece into a neat disc roughly 2.5cm thick.
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Cook
Pan-fry until crusted
Warm oil in a flat skillet over medium heat and set the cakes down so they do not touch. Give each side three to four minutes, with one light press from a spatula, until both flat faces wear a deep golden-brown crust. Resist turning early. A crust that has not set will stick, and the cake will break as you lift it.
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Assemble
Ladle over and dress
Set two warm cakes in a bowl and pour the hot ragda around and over them, enough to cover them halfway. Add tamarind and green chutneys in drizzles, then top with onion, sev, coriander and a pinch of chaat masala.
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Serve
Eat it at once
Bring the bowl to the table while the ragda still steams and the sev is crackly. A finished bowl will not wait. Within minutes the sev turns soft and the crust surrenders to the gravy, so you plate it and eat it straight away.
Stand-ins If You Are Short
Swap in dried green peas (matar) and the dish barely changes, apart from a greener tint in the gravy. If you are rushed, canned white peas, or canned chickpeas cooked with the same spices, come reasonably close, but they lack the natural body that overcooked dried peas give. For binding the potato cakes, rice flour is as good as cornflour, and a spoonful of besan will do in a pinch at the cost of a nuttier taste.
Dial the Chilli Up or Down
Since the gravy itself is only gently spiced, the chutneys and toppings decide how hot the bowl ends up, so make your changes there. To tone it down, put less chilli powder in the gravy, choose a mild green chutney and let sweet tamarind lead. To turn it up, drop a chopped green chilli into the simmering ragda, or finish with a thin line of fiery chilli-garlic chutney, a separate condiment that some Mumbai stalls keep next to the usual pair.
Where It Goes Wrong
Peas that were soaked too little or cooked too briefly produce a thin, watery ragda that lacks the body released by collapsing peas, so allow the full night and a patient simmer. The opposite error, a gravy as thick as dal, spoils the contrast between soup and firm cake, and it should run freely off a ladle. Skipping the binder lets the potato cakes crumble in the pan, because cornflour or rice flour holds them together. Finally, if you put the bowl together well before serving, the sev goes limp and the cakes soften, so assemble each portion just before it is eaten. One more thing worth watching is the heat under the skillet: if it runs too hot the crust darkens before the inside warms through, and if it runs too cool the cakes soak up oil and never form a shell.
Leftovers, Kept and Revived
Keeping: The ragda will last three days chilled in a lidded container, and it tastes a little better the next day. It stiffens as it sits, so thin it with water when you heat it. Raw, shaped potato cakes can wait a day under a cover in the refrigerator before frying, or be frozen unfried for a month. Slip a square of baking paper between the discs so they lift apart cleanly. A bowl already topped with chutneys, onion and sev cannot be saved, so keep the toppings in their own containers until the last minute.
Reviving: Heat the ragda in a saucepan at medium, stirring occasionally, and add water until it flows again. The microwave is a poor choice, since it warms unevenly and can catch the thick peas at the rim. Crisp the cakes separately in a dry skillet for two to three minutes a side, as a microwave leaves the crust limp. Join the two only when you are ready to eat.
Handle This Part Carefully
Make sure the dried white peas are soaked and then cooked all the way to softness, because underdone legumes are harder to digest and should never be eaten firm. The ragda, like any cooked bean preparation, should be chilled within two hours of leaving the stove, especially in warm weather, and brought to a steaming boil all through when reheated instead of just warmed around the edges. Because the cakes are pan-fried, start each round with fresh oil if possible, and discard oil that has turned dark or smells scorched after repeated use.