Yogurt Chicken (Indian Style)

Yogurt Chicken (Indian Style)

An Indian-style chicken dish with yogurt and red pepper.
This fail-safe recipe yields a delicious Indian-style chicken dish. Serve it with rice and you have a meal. It makes wonderful leftovers-in fact, it tastes much better as leftovers.!

INGREDIENTS:

(Serves 4)
1 frying chicken
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 medium onions
2 garlic cloves
1 tsp cayenne (red pepper)
1 Tbsp coriander (or less to taste)
2 tsp masala seasoning (see note)
2 cups plain yogurt
1/4 cup clarified butter
2 tsp salt (or less to taste)

PREPARATION:
(1) First prepare the sauce: Slice or chop the onions. Using a large heavy frypan that has a lid, saute' the onions in the oil. When they are translucent and beginning to brown, add the garlic. When its moisture evaporates, add the cayenne, coriander, and masala seasoning. Add the yogurt. Lower heat and simmer 7 minutes, partly covered. Remove from heat.

(2) Cut the chicken into chunks. If you are feeling decadent, then remove the bones from the chicken to make this a boneless-chicken dish.

(3) Pure* the onion-and-spice mixture in your food processor or food mill. Don't make it into baby food, but make sure there are no stringy pieces of onion left in it.

(4) Over medium-high heat, heat the clarified butter until it starts to smoke, then dump in the cut-up chicken all at once. Stir continuously for 2 minutes, then saut* for 3 more minutes, stirring occasionally.

(5) Add the onion-and-spice pur* to the cooking chicken. Add salt. Stir the mixture until it starts to bubble, then lower heat, cover, and sim- mer for 30 minutes.

(6) Let cool until ready to serve. The longer you wait, the better it will taste.

(7) Cook some rice to go with it. Reheat over low heat, and serve.

NOTES Masala seasoning is an Indian "general-purpose" seasoning. Serious Indian cooks make their own, and no two are quite the same. The word masala means something like "blend of spices". Since this dish isn't trying to be authentically Indian, you can use most any store-bought mixture that you like, including "Tandoori" mixtures, ``curry powders'', etc. If you want to make your own, try some mixture of cardamom seeds, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, cumin, and coriander, suit- ably mixed and ground.
If you don't want to use clarified butter you can use any cooking oil, but the clarified butter is very Indian.

Roopesh Nair