Chicken and Tomato Curry

This reminds me of home-cooked food. The kind of food I grew up eating. Salan, chawal, daal, biryani, kabab, pulao. In other words, desi khana. I don't cook subcontinental food that much because I often want to try making things I haven't eaten a lot while growing up. New, different food- unchartered territory; and so I submerged myself into the world of risotto, tofu, pastry, and mousse. But ever so often, it's nice to go back to your roots and eat something which reminds you of your childhood- and to add a little something of your own in it. Whenever I do cook desi food (or subcontinental food for all of you who don't know what desi is), I thoroughly enjoy it. I find it extremely simple to prepare (maybe that's because I'm half Pakistani) and the house ends up smelling wonderful. I never, ever get that aromatic smell when I cook other dishes such as Italian, Chinese, Mexican, or Thai.

And so here is the extremely simple chicken tomato curry I made today. You can serve it with rice, or naan, or just on its own really (which is what I did). It's a curry without the whole swimming in gravy thing going on. It's moist and will do wonderfully to mix with rice but is fine enough to eat on its own.

Ingredients
6tbsp peanut oil
1 onion, chopped finely
1 green capsicum, chopped finely
2 tsp cardamom pods
2 bay leaves
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 can diced tomatoes
2 garlic cloves, crushed
350g chicken mince
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp paprika
600ml chicken stock

Procedure
Heat half the oil in a saucepan, add the onion and capsicum and stir until softened. Add the bay leaves, cardamom pods, and cumin seeds and stir until fragrant. Season. Add the diced tomatoes and stir on medium heat for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat the garlic cloves in a separate saucepan with the remaining oil. Add the chicken and spices and stir continuously, breaking up any lumps. Cook for around 10 minutes until chicken is cooked through. Transfer chicken mixture to saucepan with tomato mixture and add chicken stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and allow to simmer for 45 minutes, covered.

Random Recipe: Pea and Potato Pakora

At 5PM this afternoon, I was browsing through food blogs and came across Belleau Kitchen. Specifically, I came across this post in Belleau Kitchen. It was a blog challenge with a closing date of.. TODAY. I had never taken part in a blog challenge and I immediately thought that I should participate in this- especially since I loved the theme.

Often, when I am bored and do not know what to make for dinner.. I close my eyes, pick up a random cookbook, blindly flip through it, and then open my eyes to see what I'll be having for dinner that night. This blog challenge called for exactly that. I rushed over to my bookshelf and since I didn't want to "take all your cook books off the shelf and shuffle them" as the challenge called for, I closed my eyes and picked out around six cookbooks at random. If I were to take all my neatly organized cookbooks off the shelf, the perfectionist OCD in me would throw a fit....

Anyways, the book I ended up picking (by further closed eyes) was one called 500 Appetizers by Susannah Blake. The recipe that the book opened up to was "pea and potato pakora with yogurt".

Very ironic. I'm half Pakistani and have never made pakora.. something of a staple in a South Asian's diet. I have eaten it though.. a lot. Apparently pakoras are perfect for when it's raining- as I'm told so often.

(I sent some of these over to my aunt for her to try and she said that these actually aren't PAKORAS.. they're something called batata wara... sounds funny, I know. Sounds like Hakuna Matata. The batter for these is the same batter used in pakora.. only difference is that this contains potato.. hence batata wara and not pakora....)

Anyways, back to the pakoras. I usually try to avoid making anything deep fried... because of the high oil content... but I made these because obviously that was the spirit of the blog challenge.. randomness and spontaneity... and who better to indulge in spontaneity than The Spontaneous Euphoria herself? Hmm.

These were exceptionally easy to make (and fun!). I loved swirling the pakoras around in the oil as they fried....

Here's the recipe.. I added double to triple the amount of chili powder and fresh green chillies though.. also, don't forget to SEASON it!

Ingredients

450g potatoes, boiled and mashed

125g frozen peas, thawed

2-3 fresh green chillies, seeded and finely chopped

4 spring onions, finely sliced

2tsp ground cumin

1tsp ground coriander

3tbsp chopped fresh coriander leaves

115g gram flour

1/2tsp chilli powder

1tsp turmeric

1tsp baking powder

200ml cold water

Sunflower oil for deep frying

Salt

Procedure

Mix the potatoes, peas, chillies, spring onions, cumin, ground and fresh coriander. Season with salt and stir to combine. Shape into 16 walnut-sized balls, place on a platter and chill for at least 30 minutes, until firm.

Mix the gram flour, chilli, turmeric, and baking powder in a bowl. Using a fork, stir in a quarter of the water to make a thick, smooth paste. Stir in the remaining water smoothly.

Heat oil for frying to 180C. Dip the balls in the batter and fry for about 2 minutes, until golden. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. Keep hot until all are ready.

Chicken Pulao - Recipe Included!

So one of my favourite dishes that are made at home is chicken pulao. I've been meaning to learn how to make it for ages now and today finally did! Here are some pictures of my experience as well as the recipe.

Chicken Pulao Recipe

Serves 12-15

Ingredients

• 1 or 2 green chillies, sliced
• 1.25kg medium tomatoes cut into fours
• 1 ½ whole garlic
• 3 1 ½ inch ginger
• 5 cinnamon sticks
• 4 bay leaves
• 3 pieces big, black cardamom
• 6 pieces small, green cardamom
• 1 handful black pepper corns
• 2 tbsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp cloves
• 9 medium onions, sliced
• 200g ghee
• 100ml vegetable oil
• 3 800g whole chicken: breast, legs, thighs separated
• 1 tbsp salt
• 2 medium potatoes, chopped
• 3 tsp chili powder
• 1.55kg basmati rice
• 2 handfuls coriander, chopped
• 2L water

Procedure

1. Blend tomatoes with green chili until thick and chunky.
2. Separately, blend ginger and garlic to a puree.
3. Heat oil and ghee in a large pot until steaming hot. Then, on high heat, add cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, cardamoms, black pepper corns, cumin seeds, and cloves. Stir until fragrant, then add onion and cook until almost brown. Hint: proceed to the next step when ghee and oil bubbles subside.
4. Add garlic and ginger mixture and cook. Color of mixture should be a rich golden and light brown.
5. Next, add chicken to pot and coat thoroughly with mixture. Add 1 tbsp salt and mix very well.
6. Put lid on and cook for ten minutes until chicken juices emerge.
7. Remove lid and stir the chicken so that the mixture does not stick to the bottom of the pot and so that the juices evaporate
8. When juices evaporate, add tomato mixture and cook until tomato liquid reduces by half.
9. Add potatoes and chili powder. Stir well.
10. Put lid on and cook for 10-15 minutes until chicken is fully cooked. Hint: oil should be present in pot.
11. Meanwhile, boil water in separate pot.
12. Add coriander to chicken and potato mixture and stir until (even more!) fragrant.
13. Add uncooked rice and stir very well. Then, add boiled water to pot and stir.
14. Add salt to taste and stir. Put lid back on and bring to boil.
15. When liquid has reduced, lower heat and simmer until liquid has absorbed.