@bmorecupcake yes it about tense and person as with any verb, just funny to translate / “hinglish”-ify 
I think the multi-step vs single step depends on the recipe, right? Meaning do you want caramelized onions first, then you add tomatoes and whatever and reduce again so the additional water evaporates, or is it a non-brown onion recipe where you start with everything together in a paste (we make seafood and other coconut curries this way) that’s fried all at once.
My mom’s trick to reduce oil needed for the masala to be properly cooked is to chop and sauté aromatics first, then add chopped tomatoes and fry those down, then grind, and then sauté to finish. The chopped step enables some caramelization without the amount of oil that starting with a paste needs. It works, and you can get away with skipping the last step even.
