A few months ago, I decided I wanted to try making simple chaats at
home. Some Indian restaurants in the U.S. have papri chaats or very
similar things. In NYC and around Edison, NJ, we even have a handful of
places with a whole list of chaats.

Looking up recipes for a basic papri chaat was not very rewarding.
While I found out that masala chaat was one of the ingredients I
couldn't have guessed at, the most simple one was the papri crisps
(puris?) themselves. The recipes I found invariably had you making your
own -- cutting the dough and frying them yourself. This might be okay
for a party, but I wanted something I could just pour out of a bag. (I
thought of pre-frying a bunch for myself, but they would probably become
stale from humidity after a week or two, even in a closed bag.)

My next stop was a large local Indian grocer, but this brought not luck.
What in the world was I looking for? From appearance, papdi gathiya
*looked* the closest to what I wanted. While my experiment produced an
interesting new snack for me, it definitely was not a "real" chaat.

Are these crisps available in markets in the US? If so, what are they
usually called?

--
Gregory Pratt
East Rutherford, NJ, USA http://www.panix.com/~gp/
"The only good spammer is a dead spammer."
PGP Key Fingerprint: DC60 FCDE 91E2 3D41 91A3 45DB B474 3D3A 3621 AAFE