My fav. was 'kadhi' (black grams) but it does not go well with my digestion now. So, it is spiced rice gruel with sliced almonds - Badian Chawal, goes well with deep-fried potatoes (dum alu, goes even better with meat kofta, but still).
Badian or Varian (Punjabi) are dried balls of heavily spiced black gram powder.
It is not what I described, but looks very similar.
Now you've made me hungry.... that sounds delicious!
I haven't had dum aloo in a long time... if it wasn't 1am, I'd go downstairs and make some....