Sunday 24 June 2007

Sathya's Chicken and Vegetable Curry


Murphy paid me a visit last week on my well deserved week's annual leave and landed me with a god awful cold.

By day 4 I dragged myself into the kitchen and made this curry. I put loads of chilli, garlic and ginger and sure enough the next day I was a lot better.

Problem with me is, I always cook for 10 people, when there is only 2 of us! Thankfully Stacy and Will came to the rescue, thanks guys.
Ingredients:

2 tsp mustard seeds
1 ½ tsp cummin seeds
8 coriander seeds, smashed in mortar & pestle
½ tsp tumeric
7 curry leaves
2 tsp ground coriander
1 ½ tsp ground cummin
½ tsp asafoetida
2 tsp chilli flakes
3 fresh chillies
3 cm ginger
2 onion
3 garlic
2 tins diced tomatoes
tbs tomato paste
4 tsps of stock powder
vegetable oil
4 potatoes, peeled and cut into large dice
8 chicken thighs, large dice
300g green beans, cut in half
greek yogurt
streamed basmati rice


Frying all the spices, etc can go fast, so I find it easiest to have everything ready on the bench next to me for east access.

I put the onions, garlic, ginger and fresh chillies into a food processor to chop to a mush. According to the experts who have taught me their tricks, this makes a nice “gravy”.

In a large pot heat up a tablespoon of oil. You will need a lot of oil to fry all these spices, so feel free to add more.

Once the oil is hot add the mustard seeds. Once these begins to sizzle and pop add the cummin seeds, asafoetida, curry leaves and chilli flakes. I had a cold when I made this curry so I added a lot of chilli so use your own chilli opinion. Fry for a minute or 2.

Add the ground cummin and coriander to this mix and stir through.

Add the processed mix of onions, garlic, ginger and fresh chillies to the spices and and fry for 5-10 minutes. Turn down the heat so as not to burn.

In a separate pan, fry the chicken quickly to seal.

Add the tinned tomatoes, chicken, potatoes, 4 cups of water, stock cubes, tomato paste and season.

Bring to the boil and turn down to a simmer and allow to simmer for as long as possible. Minimum 30 minutes, maximum 2-3 hours. Allowing the curry to simmer for several hours will cause the meat and potatoes to fall apart nicely.

Serve with rice, yogurt, and chutney or pickle as you desire.

S

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