HOW TO: NO. 1
Cook the Perfect Chicken Curry
Cooking is an art and many a great chef ensures you know it. The pristine porcelain plate is a canvas for accurate expressions of abstract visual creativity; every morsel of food a nugget of gold transporting one to an exotic land that perhaps only exists in the imagination of said chef (though, who are we to question what is imaginative and what is real?). At the highest level, dinner is as much a hush-hush, intellectual (and, if it goes wrong, truly, delightfully pretentious) experience as it is a gastronomic one.
Indian cuisine is different. Regardless of what the highest echelons of Le Cordon Bleu-type chefs might assert, Indian cuisine is meant to be devoured. Messily. Ideally with one’s hands. Ideally with boisterous family and friends. And ideally as the opening act to that fifteen-minute-turned-two-hour nap.
The chicken curry epitomises this. Follow the following recipe, perfected, as our friends in a certain Brummie-centric television show would quip, for the eradication of seemingly incurable sadness:
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Wash 500g of chicken gently in water.
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Marinate chicken with a pinch of red chilli powder, a pinch of salt. Sprinkle lightly with coriander leaves.
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Leave in fridge for two hours.
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Take chicken out of fridge.
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Cut one onion, two pods of garlic and a quarter piece of ginger. Put in blender until reduced to fine pulp.
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Pour four tablespoons of mustard oil (can be substituted for sunflower oil) in a pressure cooker and heat.
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Put three pieces of split cardamom, three pieces of cloves, a piece of cinnamon the size of your pinkie and a smattering of patch phoran into pressure cooker and gently stir.
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Blend onion, garlic and ginger. Put into pressure cooker and sauté for five minutes.
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Put three teaspoons of coriander leaf powder, one teaspoon of turmeric and one teaspoon of red chili powder. Mix for five to six minutes.
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Put marinated chicken into pressure cooker and mix well. Ensure chicken is covered with sautéed mix.
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Leave for two minutes and then mix chicken again. Repeat on and off for half an hour.
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Pour two teacups of water into mix and cover pressure cooker with lid. Leave until whistle sounds three times.
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Leave to cool in pressure cooker for five minutes.
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Crack open a beer and find a good footie match.
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Et voilà. En avant.