Chettinad Chicken

Submitted by Baz231

"From Rick Stein's awesome India cookbook. Uses a hard to find ingredient called Dagarful, which is a lichen off a tree with a flavour like cinnamon (also sometimes called kalpasi, stoneflower, dagar phool, marapasi). If you can't find it, no problem, just add another half a cinnamon stick. (Food.com doesn't recognise dagarful as an ingredient so I had to put the alternative extra cinnamon stick first, but try to use dagarful.) If using dagarful, sort through it and remove/discard any pieces of bark first. Serve with steamed/boiled basmati rice. I also add approx 200g green beans (cut to 3 cm lengths) to the curry when I add the chicken, (microwaved for a minute or so first, if you don't like your beans too crunchy.)"

 

• Ready In: 45mins
• Ingredients: 18
• Serves: 4

ingredients

• For the spice blend

• 1 tablespoon fennel seed
• 1 tablespoon cumin seed
• 1 tablespoon coriander seed
• 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
• 1 tablespoon kashmiri chili powder

• For the chicken

• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon fennel seed
• 5 cm piece cinnamon sticks
• 3 cm piece cinnamon sticks (if not using 1 tbsp dagarful, very roughly chopped)
• 150 g shallots, diced
• 5 -10 g curry leaves
• 800 g skinless boneless, chicken thighs (cut into 5 cm/2 inch pieces)
• 4 garlic cloves, finely crushed (20g)
• 4 cm ginger, finely grated (20g)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
• 125 ml water
• 200 g green beans (optional)

directions

1. For the spice blend, put the spices in a spice grinder and process to a powder. (Alternatively, you could use pre-ground fennel, cumin, coriander and peppercorns, but use less - say 1 tsp of each).
2. For the chicken, heat the oil in a karahi or frying pan over medium heat, add the fennel, cinnamon stick and dagarful and fry for 1 minute.
3. Add the shallots and curry leaves and fry for 10 minutes on low heat until the shallots are softened and golden.
4. Turn up the heat to medium, add the chicken to the pan (and beans, if using) and stir it around for 1 to 2 minutes, then stir in the garlic, ginger, sugar, salt and all of the spice blend, and fry for 2 minutes.
5. Add the water and cook for about 10 to 15 minutes, stirring often and adding more splashes of water if needed to stop it sticking to the pan, until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce is thick and reduced, and clinging to the chicken.
6. Serve with basmati rice.