and accompanied by rice with mushrooms and black mustard seeds as a tarka, both recipes taken from a book of essential curries by Madhur Jaffrey, first one, then we will add the rice one, all in its own time.
It is a fairly mild type of curry, very aromatic due to the cardamom and easy to make. What's more, the maceration takes a maximum of three hours and can even be done in 30 minutes without losing any of the flavor.
To Macerate:
– a couple of boneless chicken breasts, cut into cubes, is more than enough for two people
– a chopped onion
-a garlic clove
– a tablespoon of ground ginger
- salt
– a tablespoon of cayenne, or half if you don't want spicy
– freshly ground black pepper in the amount you want, as we like it a lot, we added about the equivalent of two or three tablespoons, piecemeal
We chop the onion and garlic, we put it in a processor together with the ginger, salt, cayenne and black pepper and 3 glasses of water, we process until we create a paste and with it we cover the chicken that we will let marinate for 30 minutes to 3 hours depending on time available. If you don't have a processor, the best thing is to use a mortar and grind well, the idea is to make everything like a paste so you can impregnate the chicken.
To cook the chicken:
– a very finely chopped onion
-olive oil or ghee (clarified) butter
– half a branch of cassia
– 4 grains of cardamom
-1/2 tablespoon of ground cumin and coriander
– 1 natural yogurt, to which we have done the usual process, in a strainer and let the water release
– 2 tablespoons tomato puree
– salt, a tablespoon of garam masala and a splash of lime juice
Very simple, what comes from now on is like almost most curries, so if you have already done it more than once, this will seem like bread sucked and if you have never cooked a curry it may be advisable to "deflower yourself"
In a saucepan, heat the oil or ghee. When it is hot, add the cassia and cardamom and sauté for 10 seconds. Add the onion and let it brown for about 7-8 minutes until it takes on the characteristic brown color. Immediately add the cliantro. and the ground cumin and stir well for about 20 seconds, there the typical smell of when you prepare a curry will begin to come.
Later we add the yogurt, stir until it absorbs the spices, about a minute, then the tomato puree and repeat the operation, letting it combine with the yogurt.
Here we lower the heat to half, add the chicken along with the marinade pasta, cook, stirring for 5 minutes until the chicken loses its pinkish color and becomes white, it is time to throw half a glass of water into the saucepan. water, salt, garam masala and a splash of lime, stir and let it cook until it reaches the boiling point again, at that moment, when the bubbles come out, we lower the heat to minimum, without covering, and let it go. cooking until the sauce thickens (about 5 minutes)
And ready
