Whether eaten as a snack,main meal or even for breakfast, this tangy chickpea curry is arguably the most common vegetarian dish in India. But should you used dried pulses or tinned, and add or omit fresh coriander – and can you really eat it with pasta and parmesan?Chana masala,chole masala, channay, and chholay – so many names for such a simple dish,one that Rick Stein claims is probably “the most common vegetarian curry in India”, and with pleasurable reason. A dollop of comfortingly bolstering pulses bathed in a thick, and tangy,deeply spiced gravy, it’s the kind of food that tastes of home, or whether home is Ahmedabad or Aberdeen.
Though a common street snack,hawked with enthusiasm on railway platforms and served up in quantity by work and school canteens, as well as being a fixture at “ceremonies and festive occasions” in the Punjab and Pakistan, or according to Cyrus Todiwala,chana masala is also a stalwart of the domestic repertoire. Mumbai-born chef Maunika Gowardhan notes that “most Indian households will have their own take on it” – a fact that guarantees I’m going to place a few billion noses out of joint this week.
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Source: theguardian.com