One of My Favorite Foods - Chholay Masala

Hi people of Steemit. Many of you may have had the experience of trying out Indian cuisine at a restaurant and most of you would have had a westernized version of whatever food you ate in that restaurant. The authentic Indian cuisine is a lot different from what most of the people outside of India eat.

India has a rich diversity in food - from north to south. Each state in India has it's own cuisine and special dishes. I guess, this is the reason why there shouldn't be any classification as Indian cuisine because the variety is too much to restrict it into a 'cuisine'.

But, we are not about to debate on that. This post is for one of my favorite dishes. It is called as Chholay Masala also known as Chana Masala.

Love - defined in one pic

Chholay is a type of chickpea and Masala means spice. It is a fairly simple dish that my mom makes. As I said earlier, there is a lot of diversity in India and the way of cooking Chholay changes in every region so, this a just a brief overview of how my mom makes this delicious dish. First she soaks the chickpea (Chholay/Chana) in water overnight. Then she drains the water and boils them in cooker until there are two whistles from the cooker. In the meanwhile, she chops up onions and tomatoes. Then, she pours some oil in pan/bowl and heats it. Then she adds the chopped onions and tomatoes in it. She stirs it a little bit and then she adds Ginger-garlic paste, cardamom, hot spice etc in it. After that she adds an ingredient that all the Moms all over India swear by - Masala.

If you can't make Masala at home, there are a lot of ready-made masalas in the market

Then it is just a matter of mixing the boiled Chickpea and some water in it and stirring it. And Voila! your Chholay Masala is ready! Now, for clarification, not every household in India may cook it in this exact way, but this is how people mostly cook it. And just one last thing for the non-Indians before I wrap up this post, I humbly request you to not change the name of dish just because you can't pronounce it. Most of you are not good at food nomenclature.

My face when people call Gulab Jamuns as 'Indian Fried Donuts'

So, that is all, I hope you enjoyed my post. Upvote, resteem, comment on it. Share your views about it in the comments section. Constructive criticism is welcome. Peace.