Chicken Anilé (Spicy chicken with coconut and soy sauce)


This was my experiment today (hence the pompous name, which you should promptly disregard) that actually ended up tasting good. Here's how you can make it :

Stage I
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1. Cut chicken into small pieces and marinate it in soy sauce. Use just enough sauce to cover all the pieces well.
2. Finely chop 1 big (the onions I can buy here are really big) onion.
2. Put a couple of teaspoons of oil in a big pan and fry approx. 1 cup of dessicated coconut until it's a dark shade of brown. Don't burn it.
3. Scrape the coconut to one side and put another 3 teaspoons of oil in the same pan and fry the onions until they are a deep shade of brown. Put a tablespoon of coriander powder and two tablespoons of Garam Masala and fry some more. Oh yes, add some ginger paste or some finely chopped fresh ginger.
4. At this point I added two teaspoons of chilli powder, mixed it well and took the pan off the flame. (Don't attempt to fry chilli powder for more than a few seconds else you'll end up with the whole house smelling of chilli.)
5. Put this fried mixture in a mixer, add a cup of water and grind it until it becomes a nice thick (and slightly coarse) paste. This will be our (somewhat) spicy gravy.

Stage II
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6. Wait until the chicken has marinated for at least half an hour (An hour would be good - that's what I used).
7. Now use the same pan as before and put around a cup of finely diced tomatoes (or just use tomato gravy), and put in the spicy gravy we just created. Put the lid of the pan and let it simmer on a medium heat for 10 minutes. Add a tad of water if it feels too thick or dry.
8. Add some salt (to taste)
9. Add the marinated chicken along with the broth and any soy sauce in the container.
10. Close the lid of the pan and let it cook for 10-15 minutes on a low-medium heat. Again, add a tad of water if it looks too dry.
11. At this point I added a dash of Shiraz for some weird reason. It didn't hurt the taste though I'm not sure if it helped either.
12. I also added a dash of lemon juice. Cannot hurt.
13. Add some cilantro on top to make it look good and professional.

Stage III
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14. Eat with steamed white rice. Yum.

Moral of the story: You can add a ton of ingredients into an Indian dish and still end up with something that actually tastes good!
[More on my Food and Cooking set on Flickr.]