Chillies HAVE AN IMPORTANT place in Indian-inspired cuisine. Their function is to add a dimension to food that would otherwise not exist. In addition to chillies, masala is also an important ingredient. It’s a fragrant and usually personal mix of dried spices which are freshly ground to a fine dust in a spice grinder.
Any ingredient that’s finely ground has a massively increased surface area in contact with oxygen, which means that the flavour gets opened up. So grinding your own masala, while time consuming, results in a broad spectrum of wonderful flavours. Beginner cooks should see masala-mixing as an expression of their own personalities and palates.
Back to the recipe – peel, crush and finely chop the garlic, using as few or as many cloves as you like. Personally, I feel there’s no such thing as too much garlic, but others might feel differently. Peel and chop the fresh ginger. Peel and thinly slice the onions. Drop the tomatoes briefly in boiling water, then slide off and discard the skins. Peel and cube the potatoes and the butternut. Finely chop the chillies, removing the pips if you want to reduce the heat factor.
Take a heavy-bottomed saucepan and pour in enough sunflower or canola oil to thinly coat the bottom. Bring up to medium heat and fry the garlic, ginger, chillies and onions until the onions are soft and translucent. Add the freshly ground masala plus the ground tumeric and the chicken thighs. Stir to mix well and simultaneously coat the chicken pieces.
Chop up the blanched tomatoes and add them to the pot, as well as the cubed butternut and potatoes, plus the sprigs of curry leaf. Add sufficient water or chicken stock to just cover the solids in the pot. Put on the lid and let the whole shebang simmer for 40 minutes, checking from time to time to ensure the liquids haven’t evaporated. Add extra liquid if necessary.
Season with a little salt and pepper to taste and then serve this fragrant dish with standard white rice. Some freshly chopped raw onion and tomato make a great and easy side dish, as do a few sliced cucumbers in fresh yoghurt. – David Basckin |fw
To make this meal to feed four, you will need:
8 chicken thighs
1 butternut
4 large potatoes
2 large onions
4 tomatoes
4 to 8 cloves of garlic
50mm fresh root ginger
1 to 4 big green chillies
1 tablespoon white cardamom
2 teaspoons black cardamom
1 tablespoon whole cumin seeds
1 tablespoon whole coriander seeds
50mm cinnamon bark
3 whole cloves
2 teaspoons ground tumeric
2 sprigs from a curry leaf tree
Canola or sunflower oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Parboiled white rice
Hot chicken curry with butternutWinter nights can do with a bit of extra warmth and sustenance. So how about making a simple curry filled with great flavour? For the chilli lovers out there, and I know there are thousands of you, this meal really pays homage to the humble chilli. Its influence on this dish eclipses even the succulence of the chicken thighs. On the other hand, if the idea of chilli fills you with terror, this recipe works just as well with a softly, softly approach where the focus is on spices and flavours instead of powerful heat.
