Chicken Pasanda

02.022.01

This recipe comes from David Smith's website, The Curry House, which is dedicated to providing cook-at-home versions of the staples served up by Indian restaurants and takeaways.

The idea is to match the taste as closely as possible—as anyone knows who has cooked food from recipes genuinely native to the Indian subcontinent, it does not greatly resemble the forms that have evolved in curry houses. For those evenings where you want the taste of a takeaway without surrendering control over the nutritional / ethical quality of your ingredients and processes, this website is a gem.

The printout of the chicken pasanda recipe has been sitting quietly in the Inner Mammal's recipe folder for years; last night, we finally got around to making it, and lovely it was too.

Makes 2 portions

Preparation / Cooking time: about 1h 30m all told

Ingredients
3 tablespoons vegetable oil or ghee (clarified butter)
1 small onion - finely chopped
1.5 inch piece cassia bark (or cinnamon)
2 green cardamon pods
1 inch piece fresh ginger - very finely chopped
2 cloves garlic - very finely chopped
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon ground coriander seed
half teaspoon good chilli powder
5 tablespoons Greek-style full cream yoghurt (3/4 of a 150 gm tub)
1 teaspoon (or a little more) concentrated tomato purée 
salt to taste
2 chicken breasts, skinned and cut into 1 inch pieces
2 tablespoons flaked almonds prepared as in Method
chopped fresh coriander leaf (cilantro) to garnish

As usual when using other people's freely available recipes, the Mammal directs you to the source to see what you have to do with all these ingredients.

There is a later version of this recipe, but it is available only on subscription (at the modest price of £7.75) to The Curry House Cookery Book, an e-book containing many recipes and useful information about ingredients and cooking methods.

[COMM] Waking from hibernation

Image from National Geographic, not the IM's family album 

The Mammal has been sleeping for a number of months, as is its wont, but is now beginning to emerge from hibernation. Admittedly, the weather we're having right now does not offer much encouragement to it in this brave endeavour, but its duty as a haphazard web publisher calls.

The next few posts will make note of some good recipes used recently, before returning to the more systematic purpose of the blog in indexing the Mammal's recipe collection.

A handful of links have also been added to the categories at the right of the page, as we sample new recipes or find new shops and suppliers.

Happy 2012 to all who light upon this blog.