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Fijian chicken curry
Recipe courtesy of
Ron Gounder, GM Systems & IT
NAFDA Foodservice
Ingredients
- Approx. 2kg chicken (cut in to bite-sized pieces)
- 1 onion
- 10 garlic cloves
- 1 Tbsp ginger
- 2 Tbsp salt
- ½ tsp mustard seeds
- ½ tsp cumin seeds
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 4–5 cardamom seeds
- 2–3 cloves
- 5–6 curry leaves (optional)
- 3 Tbsp garam masala
- 1 Tbsp turmeric
- 4 Tbsp tomato paste
- 2 Tbsp canola oil
- ½ cup fresh coriander
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice (optional)
- 400ml chicken stock (optional)
Method
- Chop chicken into bite-sized, stewing pieces and finely chop the onion.
- Combine garlic, ginger in mortar and pestle and pound until it becomes a paste. Add 1 teaspoon salt to help make the paste and so the garlic doesn’t fly away on you. You can also use a blender.
- Heat canola oil in a large pot.
- Add finely chopped onions and cook until well browned but do not burn – the browner, the more flavour.
- Add garlic-ginger paste and cinnamon stick, mustard seed, cloves, cardamom and cumin to the pot. Stir until the seeds pop. Add curry leaves. Watch out for oil splatter.
- Add garam masala, turmeric and tomato paste. Add some water and sauté for a minute on low-medium heat.
- Add chicken and a pinch of salt. If you are adding chicken stock, later on, add less salt.
- Stir and let cook until water comes out of chicken.
- Cook until water evaporates and fry the chicken until slightly browned, approximately 20 minutes.
- If adding chicken stock, add it now and bring to boil.
- Add chopped coriander leaves and lemon juice. Remove from heat.
- Serve over rice or with roti. Enjoy!
Roti
Ingredients
- 2–3 cups plain or whole wheat flour
- Boiling water
- Ghee clarified butter (available in most large supermarkets, found near the butter)
Method
- Boil water.
- With a large spoon, slowly add boiling hot water to the flour in a bowl. Keep adding water slowly, mixing and repeating until it is like pizza dough. Keep repeating until you have a kneadable dough that doesn’t stick to anything.
- Once the dough is made, with a cloth or brush, lightly grease the dough with ghee. Then knead the dough with the ghee. It will make the dough even softer and easy to roll. (Do not use too much ghee.)
- Divide into small balls of dough (5cm diameter).
- Grease skillet/frypan with ghee, and heat it to medium-high. Let it preheat.
- On a clean kitchen top, sprinkle some flour and flatten the dough onto it. With a rolling pin, roll it out evenly (just like with a pizza). If the dough is sticking to the surface, sprinkle some more flour to reduce adhesiveness.
- Once the roti is rolled out, place it on the ghee-greased skillet and let it cook on medium-high heat for 1 minute. Halfway through the cooking, grease the top surface of the roti with ghee (dab evenly on the surface – don’t saturate the whole roti with ghee). Grab a large cloth, and with the cloth press onto the roti while it is cooking. This will cause it to rise.
- After 30-60 seconds, flip over and heat the other side for 30-60 seconds. Keep pressing onto the roti with the cloth on this side as well.
- When it is all puffy with some brown spots, the roti is cooked.
- Repeat with the rest of your dough balls.