Thursday 25 June 2009

Chicken Chettinad

Chettinad Cuisine is the cuisine of Chettinad region of Tamil Nadu of south India and is one of the spiciest and most aromatic in India. This cuisine is mainly famous for using variety of spices for cooking its dishes, especially non-vegetarian. Chettinad chicken curry is one of the most famous dishes in this cuisine. Most of the chettinad dishes are eaten with rice and rice accompaniments such as idiyappam,appam, dosa etc. Due to the blend of spices used in this curry, aroma that arise while preparing this curry is just fabulous. I have made variations to this curry to suit my family's taste and tolerance to spices. So I reduced the spices to give a subtle taste and aroma of spices rather than an overpowering spicy taste and smell. Dont get intimidated with the long list of ingredients;they are spices that are sure to be available in your pantry and that you use for everyday cooking. We had it with battura and it was too good.

Here goes the recipe for chettinadu chicken curry:
Ingredients:
For grinding:
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 1/2 tsp black pepper corns
2 tsp Couscous (white poppy seeds)
2 small pieces cinnamon
3 cardamom
3 cloves
5 large garlic cloves
2 inch piece ginger (30 gms)
6 tbs dessicated coconut
1 tbs oil
Other ingredients needed:
3 tbs oil
1 tbs Urad Dal
1 bay leaf
15 curry leaves
1 large onion (170 gms) chopped (1 cup firmly packed)
1 tbs Kashmiri Chilli Powder
3/4 tsp turmeric powder
2 small tomatoes chopped (almost 1 cup)
1 1/2 cup water
salt as required

Preparation:
1. Heat a Frying pan to medium-high, add 1 tbsp oil. When hot, add the cumin seeds, coriander seeds, fennel seeds, black peppercorns, cinnamon stick, cardamom, cloves, coconut and poppy seeds. Stir and fry briefly until lightly roasted. Put it in the grinder and grind well to powder. Add ginger and garlic to this along with 10 tbs of water and grind it to smooth paste. Set them aside.
2. Heat the remaining 3tbsp oil in a large saucepan over a medium-high heat. When hot, add the bay leaves and urad dal. Stir and fry briefly until the urad dal turns golden, then add the curry leaves. Stir a couple of times and add the onions. Fry the onions until they turn light brown. Add the Kashmiri chilli powder and turmeric powder and just stir for few seconds.Now add the spice paste. Continue to stir and fry for about 4-6 minutes, adding a little water to prevent sticking. Add the chopped tomatoes and Stir for further 3-4 minutes or until the oil starts to leave the side of the pan.
3. Add the chicken pieces and stir until they are well coated with the masala for about 4-5 minutes. Add salt and 1 1/2 cups of water and stir well. Bring to the boil. Turn the heat to medium low, cover and simmer until the chicken is almost cooked, about 20-25 minutes.
5. If there is lot of gravy, just turn up the heat to high and keeping the lid open, boil the sauce until you get a thick sauce. Incase if the chicken is completely cooked and there is lot of sauce left in, remove the chicken using a slotted spoon and boil the sauce until it is thick. Then add the chicken pieces back in; mix well and cook for couple of minutes.
Serve hot with plain rice, chappathis, pooris, ghee rice, Battura etc. Yesterday I made this curry to go with battura and it was absolutely delicious.

16 comments:

Pavithra Elangovan said...

wow thats really really tempting.. even i dont eat NV the color of the gravy is really mouthwatering..

Manju said...

that looks totally mind blowing, Shabs!!! AJ will totally dig this :D

Kalathil said...

Looks tempting...

saffronapron.blogspot.com said...

Hey shabs,
Nice to see a pic of you at last.Nice.
I have bookmarked this recipe.That thinck gravy looks really yumm.

Seena said...

Shab, is that you on profile pic? :)
am drooling seeing the chettinadu chicken. its lucnch time here and can't suffer seeing it.. :)

Shabs.. said...

Pavithra, thx dear for ur comments and compliments.

Superchef, Thank u....

Dhanz, nee nalla busy aanennu thonnunnu....I saw ur recipes in my dashboard...they look too good....Njan angottu varunnundu..:)

hey smiths,Thx deary...try it, m sure, u will love it...

Hello seena,Ya, its me on the profile pic with my little angel..Thx for stopping by and ur comments dear....

ARUNA said...

very very tempting dish!!!!cannot stop myself from drooling!!!

Parita said...

hey your angel is so sweet :)
the dish looks quite tasty!!

Pooja said...

Aww looks so delicious Shabs! Chettinad curry is my favourite! Yours has come out perfect..just the one that I crave for often! Btw..lovely profile pic :)

NR said...

thats a lovely dish...will try it definitely!!

i like cooking...now i hope u wont say that men dont cook...lol!!!

u have a lovely blog n thanks for visiting my blog....i appreciate !!!

take care!!

Anonymous said...

looks yum..must try it soon..

--fais

Neetha said...

Hello...

It was my first time here yesterday... I tried this recipe, and the gravy was really tasty. May I however point out however that you forgot to mention how much chicken to use! I had already started on this by the time I noticed, so I decided to look at the quantity of the gravy and decide on add the pieces. It worked out fine!

Umm Maryam said...

For how much of chicken is this gravy?? Thankss : )

Umm maryam

Shabs.. said...

Hi um maryam,
thx for stopping by...Actually neetha and couple of others had also pointed me the amount of chicken...i chekced for teh recipe everywhere, but cudnt find the amount of chicken....I wanted to make this curry again ever since. But for ur help, i normally cook using 750g-900g chicken, so it shud weight somewere around that much. Sorry about that.

Regds,
shab.

April said...

Hi Shabs,

Last week I bought some chicken and made this one and Tina's 'Mint and Corriander Flavoured Chicken'.
Both were very yummy.
I had tried the Meen Biriyani also few weeks back. It was also good, but think I might need to perfect it a better next time.
So I am here to thank you again for your great yummy recipes..

And Congrats on two years of food blogging :-)

-April

shabnam said...

Can I use coconut powder?? And let me thank u for this lovely blog...I have made a number of recipes from ur blog but never left a thank u note...it's high time now....am new to cooking and u have helped me a lot...thanks a lot lot lot.may Allah bless u!!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...