Mommie Freida's Chicken chilli

Happy New Year to all my readers. 

Thanks to all your emails, wishes, and encouraging words. Above all, I am really delighted to know my small set of recipes worked for you as it was for me.  Hope to hear more comments from you. 

Happy Cooking

Ingredients

• Chicken - 1 kg 
• Eggs - 2 Nos.
• All purpose flour - 3 tbsp
• Chilli sauce - 3 tbsp
• Soya sauce - 3 tbsp
• Onion, sliced - 3 cups
• Green chillies - 7 Nos.
• Tomato sauce - According to taste
• Coriander leaves, chopped - handful
• Salt as required
• Oil for cooking
• Food color (optional)

Method

Cut chicken into small pieces and wipe off excess water from it with a towel.

In a large deep bowl, beat the eggs. To this, add flour, whisk nicely. Now add chilli sauce, soya sauce, and salt. Whisk again thoroughly. If you have decided on adding food color, add it now. Combine chicken to this and marinate for 1 hour.

After one hour, in a frying pan, fry the chicken pieces.

After frying chicken, pass the remaining oil through a sieve. Now pour the oil back to the frying pan and start sauteeing the onions. when the onions are half sauteed, add green chillies and lightly saute them. At this stage, add chicken, tomato sauce, and coriander leaves and mix well. Cook for another 5 minutes in low flame and you are done with your chicken chilli.

Served best with fried rice or a bed of noodles.

• I have not used food coloring here, though the addition lends a beautiful sheen to the chicken pieces. 
• The marinade will stain some chicken pieces black, but it doesn't really disturb the taste. 
• Addition of tomato sauce is up to you. I always end up adding a bit more of tomato sauce before serving as we all like sweetness in the dish. 

Chicken gizzard and neck curry/Chicken Nuts 'n' Bolts

For all Chicken Nuts 'n' Bolts lovers .....

Ingredients
Chicken gizzard - 500 g
Chicken neck - 500 g
Onion sliced - 3 small ones ~ 200 g
Tomato - 1 No.
Ginger chopped - 1/2 tbsp
Garlic chopped - 1/2 tbsp
Vinegar - 3 tbsp
Kashmiri Chilli powder - 1 tsp
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
Pepper powder - 1 tbsp
Garam masala - 1 tsp
Salt

For marinade 

Ginger, chopped – ½ tbsp

Garlic, chopped – ½ tbsp

Vinegar – 3 tbsp

Kashmiri Chilli powder – 1 tsp

Turmeric powder – ½ tsp

Pepper powder – 1 tbsp

For garnish
Coriander leaves

• Be careful with the use of vinegar or else the curry will go sour. 
• Taste check before adding the vinegar as you have already used some in marinade. Usually I end up using 5-6 tbsp. 

Method

Marinate chicken gizzard and neck with ginger, garlic, vinegar, Kashmiri chilli powder, turmeric powder, and pepper powder.

Pressure cook the marinated gizzard and neck till 3 whistles using ½ cup of water. Set aside the cooked gizzard and neck with water if any.

Heat oil in a kadai, sauté onions , ginger, and garlic. When the onion turns transparent, add chilli powder, turmeric powder, and garam masala. Fry for a minute. Now add the tomatoes and cook them well. Once tomatoes are all sauteed well, add gizzards, neck, pepper powder, salt, water, and vinegar if needed. Cook in low flame till the gravy is thickened or reaches your desired consistency level.  Garnish with coriander leaves. Serve with chapatis. 

Sucharitha Reddy's Kodi Shorva/Andhra style Chicken Curry

The white pearl danglings from Hyderabad were my favorite. How could I forget it? For it was exactly at the time of crushes and infatuations that I got it and gifted to my then boyfriend S (sort of, for he was never a friendly one, more of a serious type, who never forgets to buy me a masala dosa, and that he is my first love of life - My Dad). Well past that year, I met my man, then boyfriend and now my hubby dear. Of course we had our first spoonfuls of Haleem at a restaurant served by our family friends and once a kind of Haleem at work. Little later, I met our colleague Khan's beautiful begum, and with her khubani ka meeta, that was even more beautiful and delicious.These were the times Andhra popped into my world. These are the very things I would love to remember even if you ask me a decade later.   

Reading Sucharitha Reddy’s Nostalgia Cuisine is like visiting your grandma's kitchen where you get to see the brass and copper utensils at real work. No doubt today most of the brass utensils grace our living rooms, sometimes sitting right where we serve our fruit platters, or sometimes in a corner of the wide veranda as a collection, with so many sentiments attached and sometimes not, showcasing owner’s pride. At least my Mom had a handful to keep her busy with those high maintenance ones with occasional scrub of tamarind. I am not an authority on cleaning business, so can't talk about it in detail.

As I started leafing through the heavily photographed pages of the book, what stuck me was the picture of a glistening Kodi Shorva  followed by a gush of memories of Aunty Carol’s house, get togethers reminding little India assembled in her house, and of course Aunty's orange colored chicken curry as we children used to call it.

As a child, heading to Aunty Carol's on a Sunday meant eating orange colored chicken curry with basmati rice for lunch and sometimes delicious green rice with lots of side plates for small feeds from time to time, playing rummy for Dad folks, and cooking for Mommie dears. What I look forward to was the friends, hide and seek, shooting my first tidbits of Hindi, and how we all danced, way before we practiced with 1-2-3. Wow it all seemed like a perfect childhood with perfect people around. The settings were mediocre. We never dressed up like fairies nor aunty used fine bone china. What's notable was her love, which traveled beyond all caste, creed, and people. 

When you least expect it and somebody hands you a gift that you want soo badly? How you feel about it? You sure will be happy. HAPPY right. 

I too am very happy to find the recipe in Reddy's book. 

Ingredients
Chicken - 1 kg

Ginger garlic paste - 1 tbsp

Curd, whipped - 1 cup

Coconut -poppy seed paste - 2 tbsp

Red chilli powder - 1 tbsp

Coriander powder - 1 tbsp

Turmeric powder - 1 tsp

Garam masala powder - 1/2 tsp

Cinnamon sticks - 2

Cardamoms - 2

Cloves - 4

Caraway seeds - 1/4 tsp

Onions, chopped - 2 cups

Hot water - 2 cups

Salt to taste

Oil

For garnish
Coriander leaves - 2 tbsp

Method
Marinate the chicken with ginger-garlic paste, curd, coconut-poppy seed paste, red chilli powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder and salt. Keep aside for 30 mins.

Heat oil in a pan. Add the cinnamon, cardamoms, cloves, caraway seeds and the onions.

Saute till the onions turn golden brown.

Add the marinated chicken and cook for 5 mins till the raw flavor goes. Cover and cook for some time. Stir well and let the chicken simmer for a few minutes till the oil separates. Finally add the hot water and let the gravy cook for some more time. Sprinkle the garam masala powder and garnish with the coriander leaves. Serve Kodi shorva hot.

Mutton shorva can be prepared similarly.

Chicken Nawabi

What if you can't live a life of Nawab, you surely can eat like one. But gotta be once in a blue moon indulgence. Chicken Nawabi took some slaving over the stove, but the end result was the royal taste with less spice and I loved it. The real recipe called for lots of butter and dalda. I substituted it with sunflower oil (Can't say it is healthy, considering the quantity of oil that went into the making of the curry) and towards the end poured in a little bit of butter. After all, what a life without some butter. I tailored it considering the huge calorie factor. 

If you are living a life, weighing your calories, then skip this page and move on. Otherwise, you will feel so so guilty afterwards. Nawabs feasted like this, oh no! so dangerous. Can tell this now, because I licked my last quota of Nawabi today.  This recipe is surely going to my files for later use to win many more hearts.  

Recipe Source: Vanitha, altered by me.

For the gravy 

Onions chopped – ½ kg
Tomatoes chopped – ½ kg
Cashewnuts – 175 gm (grind this after soaking in hot water)
Vegetable Oil – 50 gm
Tomato sauce – 2 tbsp
Sugar – 1 tsp
Kasoori methi – 2 ½ tsp

To Marinate the chicken

Chicken – 1 kg

Ginger paste – 2 tsp

Garlic paste –  2 tsp

Chilli powder – 1 tsp

Lemon juice – 2 lemons

Turmeric powder – ¼ tsp

Salt

Oil for frying

For the curry

Vegetable oil

Onion sliced – 1

tomato chopped – 1

Green chillies – 3

Ginger – ½ tsp

Cumin powder – 2 tsp

Coriander powder – 2 tsp

Chilli powder – 2 tsp

Tumeric powder – 1 tsp

Cashewnuts – 10

Raisins -10

Directions

Heat oil in a kadai, sauté chopped onions. When the onion turns brown (don’t burn it), add chopped tomatoes and cook well. When the tomatoes turn mushy and oil starts to float, add ground cashewnuts, tomato sauce, sugar, and kasuri methi. When it starts to boil, switch off the stove and keep aside the rich gravy.

Marinate the chicken (with ingredients shown above) for 45 minutes. Now fry them in oil and keep them aside.

Heat oil in another kadai, sauté sliced onion and chopped tomato, add all the powders. Saute for a minute. Now add fried chicken pieces. Let everything blend well. Switch off the stove. Now add this to the gravy, which we have prepared earlier. Chicken Nawabi is ready to be served. Decorate it with fried cashewnuts in butter, raisins, and coriander leaves. 

Chicken Nawabi is great to go with chapathis, pita breads, and ghee rice.