Curiouser

Passport & Plate - Skype Chicken Curry

India | Friday, March 6, 2015 | 5 photos

Ingredients
Chicken - 600 gms (For two people, or one, if you eat a lot. Clean it well) skinned breast and leg pieces

Ginger (A juicy one, when you break it should have a deep voice and not a sharp dry one), garlic, coconut oil (It’s healthy! Don't think, just add it)
- 1 tablespoon each

A few fresh curry leaves

Coriander, cumin powder (Just enough to smell it, till the curry’s colour darkens)
- 2 tablespoons

Turmeric powder (When there is meat involved, turmeric is a must)
-1/2 tablespoon

Red chilli and garam masala powder (Till you get a slight prick of the chilli when you taste)
- 1 teaspoon each

4 chopped onions (When you hold the onion both the knuckles on your finger bend a little)
- medium sized

4 medium sized tomatoes

Ghee - 4 tablespoons

Cinnamon - 1 stick (The size of your little finger)

Cloves - 3 nos

Aniseed (how much you get if you pick with tips of all fingers)
- ½ teaspoon

Peppercorns - 4 nos

Water - 2 teacups

Salt to taste

 

How to prepare this recipe
A minute after the coconut oil has been heated in an open cooker on medium flame, put in the curry leaves, cinnamon, cloves, pepper and aniseed. Once they start sputtering, add the chopped onions. Sautee till they go limp, brown and give out a sweet smell.
Ginger and garlic go next. They are quick to brown so don’t keep them for long before the tomatoes go in. Once the tomatoes get crinkly skinned and ooze water in heat, squish them with the ladle and blend into the rest of the mixture. After this add the powders( turmeric, coriander, red chilli and cumin). Give them 2 minutes to interact.

Loosen this gravy with water and then immerse the chicken. Cover the cooker with it’s lid and wait for it to whistle twice. Open the lid and stir for a few minutes till the curry thickens. Pour into the serving bowl and sprinkle some Garam Masala.

For the tastiest part, take a handful of rice and mix it with the caked bits of leftover gravy in the cooker and eat while hot.

 

The story behind this recipe
The ingredients and instructions in brackets mentioned above is exactly how the recipe sounds to me when my mother, authoritatively, speaks it out through skype. After moving out of home to another county, one of the many things that gave me a sense of accomplishment was to make a dish that tastes familiar. More than the process, I used to completely enjoy how Lilly(my mother) would instruct and express the ingredients, not in grams or teaspoons, but in phrases. This does not follow any international standard of measurement. The recipes, passed on orally, were tailor-made for me - cinnamon sticks the size of my little finger. “How much tamarind?” I’d ask and she would say “roll it like a ball the size that fits into the cup of your palm, like how you do when you play with modelling clay”.

“I dont know the exact amount of things” she exasperates, “Ellam kai-alavu aanu (it’s all the measure of the hand), you’ll just have to learn by doing”. Her voice on the phone transports me to her kitchen as we watch her cook on weekends. A pinch of this, and a stick of that would go. She takes a quick whiff, and adds some more if it’s not enough. I would sit with a small notepad, and the column for measurements could never be filled accurately. Lilly, from Kerala, who is cooking in Muscat where she lives and works. Like me now, she was cooking chicken in coconut oil, infusing some Kerala into the meat from the Gulf. After it’s all done, like a reward for watching patiently, she would put a handful of rice into the cooker, mix it with the bits of gravy left behind. There was enough curry to feed an entire household, but that handful of rice had more takers than the Mars mission. I still do that, for Lilly, who got that from her mother and for the taste of course. An act which crownes the end of cooking. A delicious reward which tastes of home and is like an ode to the people who stayed behind, who continue to flavour your life ahead as you move on.