Jun 11, 2014

Chhole recipe

It never fails. There's no-one around, and I bring down to the kitchen some pasta and sauce. No sooner than I strike a match to light the stove, when Chandra pops in and offers to cook some Indian food. Or I'll stick my head in the kitchen and Shiva and Chandra will be already eating and have food left over and they'll insist I join them.

Actually, I feel really bad about it because they're sharing the room next to mine, a much smaller room, and they're both basically interning at different companies here in town. So I've been making a conscientious effort to restock their shared lader with a bag of potatoes or cauliflower or onions now and then. And lots of bread. Chandra eats tons of bread. He sits beside the toaster and provides a continuous stream of toast which he uses to scoop and sop up the various curries. Apparently its the way they eat in his northern state in India.

Shiva, from the far south, prefers rice with his curries, so he mixes the curry into the rice and simply scoops it up with his hands to eat. We don't wash much in terms of flatware.

Anyway, today Chandra taught me how to make Chhole, which is a curry with chickpeas.

-cover the bottom of a large saucepan with vegitable oil and heat on high.
-While the oil is heating, chop up 2 tomatoes, 1 large onion, 3-4 indian green chilies, 2-3 cloves of garlic, and peel and shred/chop/grind two thumbs worth of ginger.
-When the oil is hot, add 1 tsp of black mustard seeds and 1 tsp of whole cumin seeds.
-Give the seeds abut 30 seconds to brown and add the chiles and chopped onion. Stir and cook until the onion begins to turn brown.
-Add in the chopped garlic and ginger and tomatoes, and cook for a few minutes.
-Add 1 tbsp salt, 1 tsp garam marsala, 1 tsp corriander powder, 1 tsp tumeric, and 2 tbsp of chana marsala, stir.
-Lower the heat to medium and keep stirring. The onions should be carmelizing and liqueifying along with the tomatoes, and the entire sauce should getting thicker and more homogenous as the water boils off. Cook for a few more minutes until sauce is very thick.
-rinse two cans of chickpeas and add to the sauce. Mix well until the chickpeas are warm and well coated.

Serve with rice or flat breads.

Smells freaking amazing every step of the way.

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