Peeling back the layers…

Posted on: October 27, 2019 Posted by: kulisingh Comments: 1

Peeling back the layers…

A good while ago, who knows how long? Perhaps months, perhaps years, such is the vaguary of the temporal plane in my mind… Regardless, the exact time is fairly irrelevant, but as we can all attest to, if we cast our minds in to the past, we can be right back at that time and place: the sights, sounds, smells, taste, or as in this case, right in the middle of that very epiphany!

Demonic social media had got a hold of me: twitter this time, scrolling endlessly, mindlessly, in the hope that that the perfect dopamine hit would present itself, this electronic Pandora’s box, full of clammering minds, shouting over and above each other, desperate to garner my attention via dancing electrons.

Surprise, suprise, my Twittersphere is fairily full of gustatory wonders. Scroll, scroll, scroll, yawn, giggle. Scroll again. Sound familiar? The demon had taken control completely: the thirst was intense, untameable and could not be slaked. Suddenly, in the flick of an eye, lo behold, a flurry of neurons collaborated to register that here it was, yes, the golden nugget, the answer to the question I hadn’t realised I was looking for until now!

Someone had shared an article by a very erudite and clever soul: a major gripe, a huge great hulking bugbear of a moan was laid bare, splayed out for all to see. As happens when an article captures the zeitgeist, many people were driven to comment, to reply and argue, and agree, and talk nonsense and go off on to a myriad of weird and wonderful tangents, and yes there were probably several memes and a cute cat picture or three hundred in amongst it all. My memory being what it is, I may just be being fanciful, but you get the picture…

The comments tickled me, having got the point of the article from the heading and sub-heading, without having actually reading it. I cast off my cloak of attention-deficit Twitterousity and I braced myself. I opened said article, focused and took it all in, word for word, the breath-taking, impudent magnificence of it all: the unshakeable truth, the huge elephant in the room of my culinary life. I felt like Neo did, suddenly taken out of the Matrix and faced with the utter hideousness of it all…

The article, brilliantly penned by Tom Socca, was entitled thus: Layers of Deceit – Why do recipe writers lie and lie and lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? You have to love and love and love the heading, don’t you? Why had I been so blind for so long? I had lived in a world where yes indeed, everywhere you look in the culinary publishing world, onions are mythical beasts in a parallel universe where they just magically yield their sweet complexity in the blink of an eye.

Madhur Jaffrey’s books on Indian and Asian cooking have inspired me tirelessly, yet, when it comes to the subject of how onions need to be cooked to make a decent North Indian meat dish, the truth is, I don’t recall her ever dealing with the inconvenient truth of how this particular allium needs to be coaxed gently, slowly and lovingly, in order to manifest its leading role there-in. In fact, much like Tom, I have gone back to check my memory, and I must confess, she seems to have a lot of poultry recipes that don’t appear to need browned onions and that’s fine. However, I did find one that asserts that the onions can be browned in 6-7 minutes, similar to the Rojan Josh recipe of hers that Tom had cited. I have read about these miraculous onions everywhere in the past, and given these books were published, I had read them and on the surface, had took them as gospel, despite my internal, visceral antipathy and irk.

I can’t particularly comment on Tom’s initial discovery of this lie when related to scones, but for me, I always know that my instinctive understanding of how to make a North Indian meat curry, a dish I grew up with, and one familiar in some shape or form to many people in the UK as being quintessential Indian food, ‘a curry’, was totally misunderstood by many people. It’s ironic that a chicken curry is one of the things most loved by me, and one of the first things people try to make, but also one of the hardest things to get right, particularly starting out.

As with everything, the devil is in the detail: a well established cook understands. There is a finesse, a quiet understanding, a sensory and muscle memory of how things work and come together: a flick of the wrist, the right temperature of the oil, when the texture works, how something smells, when to move it. Every performance in the kitchen is a distillation of all the times before: of lessons learnt, mistakes made, of the knowledge and blessings of our cultural heritage: to survive, to nourish, to delight.

People often get hung up with the perception that Indian food has to be complex, involving a smörgåsbord of exotic and unpronounceable spices as long as your arm. However, in reality, that is simply not true: yes, India is a huge subcontinent with so many different cuisines, but you can get amazing results with a small number of spices and the appropriate use of culinary deft. With a North Indian meat curry, I have always known it’s all about the onions: get those right for the heart and soul. Get it wrong and it will be lifeless, pallid and a shadow of the real thing. Of course garlic, ginger and a few spices (cumin, coriander seeds, turmeric and garam masala) are fairly essential in addition, but then anything else, frankly are embellishments around the edges.

So, recipe time: what else but a classic everyday, Punjabi chicken curry made in homes all over the region and all over the world by the diaspora (not the oily restaurant version)! Certainly, no 5 minute onions here! Instead, I give you a detailed and engaging account of how you can create an authentic dish with flair, bursting with flavour, a taste of home, comfort food. I grew up with skinless meat on the bone, but go with whatever you are comfortable with…

Home-style chicken curry

Ingredients

  • 600 g. chicken (give or take) (I prefer thigh / drumstick meat, boned or boneless as you prefer, please use free range and organic if you can!)
  • 3 tbsp ghee / rapeseed oil
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 large onion (or 2 medium), chopped finely
  • 8 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 2 inches garlic, finely chopped
  • 2 green chillis, finely chopped
  • 1 tbsp ground coriander seeds
  • 1 tsp turmeric
  • 1/2 tsp red chilli powder
  • 150g tinned tomatoes
  • Salt or chicken stock to taste (stock adds more chicken flavour if you are not going for on the bone)
  • 1 tsp garam masala (much better home made and freshly/recently ground, but shop bought is fine)
  • A handful of chopped coriander

Method

In a medium saucepan, add the 3 tbsp ghee / oil. When moderately hot, add in the cumin seeds and leave for a few seconds until they sputter. Now add in the onion and of course this is the point at which one needs to pay attention! The key (as my mother always used to tell me) is to not faff about and keep on stirring! At the start the onions will soak up all the oil. Leave the onions and let them cook away on a medium to high heat for a good 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally, making sure things don’t catch (things are relatively low risk at the moment). You should start to see something like the following:

There is a party in my saucepan…

Now, at this point lower the heat to medium. You need to pay more attention as time goes on as more of the onions get colour, and we start to darken a few shades. So stir more often and be more vigilient. Around 30 minutes in you should start to notice that noises the pan make and the smells start to change – with time this will become instinctive. The oil starts to leave the onions as essentially, all the moisture has left the onions and you have much less volume left. At this point, you really do need to be on it and manage your onions, else instead of caramelising things will catch and burn, and that is really not a flavour we are aiming for! If things seem to be getting hairy, make sure you have a cup of water to hand to add a splash of water to stop things going too far (or turn the heat down).

Caramel, lovely caramel…

As you can see above, the volume is much reduced: we have a nice shade of brown, and on the edges you can see the fizzing of the oil that has left the onions.

Once you are happy that you have an intense, assemblage of caramelised onion, and not a burnt mess (which can happen, even to those experienced), you can now add the ginger, garlic, chilli. Carry on cooking your mixture for a good five to ten minutes (continuing to stir to ensure the onions don’t burn), to ensure the rawness of said items has left them, and actually good if they get a bit of colour too.

At this point, add the turmeric, ground coriander, chilli powder and salt, (or stock). Give it a quick stir for 30 or so seconds to ensure they have cooked and been incorporated. Now add in the tomatoes and cook them into the masala for five minutes, so everything has come together and the tomato pieces have broken down. Now add the chicken in and turn the heat right up. At this point we want to fry the chicken in the oil of the masala: we want it take on the flavours of the dish and the seasoning. This needs a good five to ten minutes or so.

Nearly there…

Finally, you can now add a good cup or cup and a half of water, and simmer, thus allowing the chicken to tenderise, and to reduce down to your desired consistency. There really is no hard and fast ‘authenticity’ here. In a home, you may want a nice soupy ‘tari‘ (or gravy), or other times you want it less soupy and with a thicker consistency (probably the Goldilocks sweet spot most people are familar with), or reduce down to an intense and dry curry (that is why it’s best to under-season and then finish off at the end).

Once you are happy with the result, add garam masala and chopped coriander for a final flourish of complexity and fragrance! Serve with rice and other dishes. Eat and enjoy!

The final result

Embellishments

You can take the above recipe and move it in many directions. Here are some common embellishments/changes:

  • Add a whole load of ‘kare masale’ (whole spices) to make things extra special – garam masala tends to have these things, but starting off with these whole spices will add an extra dimension: typically bay leaves, cloves, black cardamom, cardamom, whole pepper corns. Here we are back in the typical perception of Indian food needing loads of different spices – by all means do, but it is NOT necessary!
  • Marinate the chicken in yoghurt before hand to tenderise and thicken the sauce and add a different flavour
  • Add fresh fenugreek (methi) leaves (if you can them) to give their characteristic flavour – ‘methi chicken’
  • Add generous handfuls of fresh or frozen minced spinach to make chicken saag: the sauce goes emerald green, is utterly delish and we have added nutrional dynamite! Hidden veggies for the kids too!

1 people reacted on this

  1. #Hookahmagic
    Мы всегда с Вами и стараемся нести только позитив и радость.
    Ищите Нас в соцсетях,подписывайтесь и будьте в курсе последних топовых событий.
    Строго 18+

    Кальянный бренд Фараон давно завоевал сердца ценителей кальянной культуры вариативностью моделей кальянов,
    приемлемым качеством и низкой ценовой политикой. Именно эти факторы играют главную роль в истории его успеха. Не упускайте очевидную выгоду и вы! Заказывайте кальян Pharaon (Фараон) 2014 Сlick в интернет-магазине HookahMagic и оформляйте доставку в любой регион РФ. Мы гарантируем быструю доставку и высокое качество предоставляемой продукции.

    https://h-magic.su/flow
    Удачных вам покупок!

Comments are closed.