Estimated Nutrition (whole recipe, rough)
Counts 9 of 10 ingredients — the other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and contribute nothing above, so the real totals are higher.
What these numbers assume — 9 portions →
| Ingredient | Portion assumed | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken | 100g cooked | 165 |
| Onion | 1 medium (110g) | 44 |
| Plum | 1 medium (66g) | 30 |
| Tomato | 1 medium (123g) | 22 |
| Turmeric | 1 tsp ground (3g) | 9 |
| Pepper | 1 tsp ground (2.3g) | 6 |
| Garlic | 1 clove (3g) | 4 |
| Ginger | 1 tsp grated fresh (2g) | 2 |
| Salt | 1 tsp (6g) | 0 |
| Coriander | not in our table | 0 |
Totals for the whole recipe, adding one typical portion per ingredient — listed above. Quantities in the recipe are not counted, so this is a rough guide only — not suitable for medical or dietary planning.
Ingredients
- right|thumb|300px|Ingredients
- Get some chicken: skinless, boneless, chicken thighs from your high-street butcher shop. Wash and chop up into bite-size pieces. I used around 750g today. This will cook enough for 4 hungry adults. Do not use chicken breast - as chicken breast is so dry and bland - and the end-result will be really
Directions
OK - so chop all the onions into coarse-ish strips. Also chop all the peppers into bite-sized chunks. And get an electric blender ready. Open up the tins of plum tomato - and pour the contents of one of them into the blender.
thumb|center|250px|Prepare a blender.Chop the onions.Chop the peppers
thumb|center|250px|Pour tin if tomato into blender
Then add some pieces of the chopped green pepper - about 1 peppers worth. Give it a good 15 second zap. Then add a bunch of fresh coriander leaf - stalks and all. Zap for another 15 seconds or so.
thumb|center|250px|Add some pieces of green pepper
thumb|center|250px|Then add some coriander leaves
Then add the pre-pulped garlic, ginger and chillie - add the second tin of tomato - and zap it for another 10 seconds. What you should have is a thick dark green-ish sauce - which you should then pour into a large bowl. Then add the powdered spices to the sauce bowl: about 3 heaped teaspoons of haldi, 3 or 4 heaped teaspoons of garam masala - 2 teaspoons of salt, and 2 heaps of ground coriander. Don’t be put off by the colour of the sauce at this point - a dark dirty-green swamp type sauce - when it cooks it will go a wonderfully aromatic rich reddish-brown!
thumb|center|250px|And finally throw in the garlic,ginger and chillie
thumb|center|250px|Pour mixture into bowl and add spices
Stir in the ground spices thoroughly. It was at this point that little MissRoute79 came running into kitchen and pleaded with me if she could help me. So - I let her stir it around. (She had to stand on a foot-stool to reach!) You also need to get the onions cooking out now. Put plenty of oil into a large cooking pan - and stir fry the onions until they start to become translucentish. This might take around 10 mins.
thumb|center|250px|Give it a good stir
thumb|center|250px|Frying the onions
Then add the remaining chunks of red and green pepper - and stir fry until the onions have started to go goldenish brown. At this point - pour in the chopped chicken thighs - and stir fry carefully.
thumb|center|250px|Add the remaining peppers to the stir-fry
thumb|center|250px|When the onions are getting brown put the chicken
Stir-fry the chicken until the chicken has turned from slimy-pink to rubbery-white. At this point you should pour the spicy sauce mixture over the chicken.
thumb|center|250px|Stir-fry until chicken is white-ish
thumb|center|250px|Add the sauce mixture
Give the pot a good, thorough stir - ensuring all the chicken is covered in the sauce. Do this whilst the flame is on really high - so that eventually the whole pot starts to boil nearly fiercely!
thumb|center|250px|Give it a good stir
thumb|center|250px|Bring to fierce boil
Now lower the flame to the lowest you can go - and place a lid on the pot - leaving a little gap for steam to escape - and the sauce to reduce. Leave it slow-simmering like this for about 1 hour - coming back to stir it around every 15 minutes or so. Then take a taste of the sauce with a spoon - to test if there’s enough salt or spices. If not - add some more salt and garam masala - and keep tasting until it tastes perfect.
thumb|center|250px|Lower flame to very gentle simmer
thumb|center|250px|Stir every 15 mins.Then it's done
Voila! It’s done. Put lid back on - and you can reheat it later when you wish to serve. You can call it a “chicken curry” if you like - but because it’s got green and red peppers in it - you might want to call it “chicken jalfrezi” - call it whatever you like. This way of cooking it was taught to me by my mum when I was a college kid. Serve it on a bed of freshly-cooked basmati rice - with a salad accompaniment - and a side-plate of a couple of fresh green chillies (if you can cope with biting into fresh green chillie) or achaar (pickle). Because that’s exactly how I’m going to have it tonight!