Destinations - The Holiday and Travel Show at Earl's Court.

Saturday, 04 February 2012 20:49

Buy Manju's Books -

These are the two recipes demonstrated at the Taste the World Theatre in early February. The Kerala Chicken Curry and the Kashmiri Spinach.

Kerala Chicken Curry by Manju Malhi from Classic Indian Recipes published by Hamlyn.
This dish is made with ingredients commonly used in South Indian cooking. If you cannot get hold of coconut milk, you can use coconut cream immersed in hot water or grated and then added to the curry. Try and get hold of fresh curry leaves but if they're not available, the next best thing is the dried variety. For a vegetarian variety, use parboiled carrots, beans and potatoes.

Serves 4

4 green finger chillies, roughly chopped, plus 2 more, slit lengthways to garnish
½ tsp turmeric
¼ tsp ground coriander
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp peeled and finely grated fresh root ginger
4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
¼ tsp salt
4 tbsp groundnut oil
5-6 curry leaves
2-4 cloves
1 large onion, finely sliced
1kg chicken breasts, skinned and pricked and chopped into 2cm pieces
200ml coconut milk

In a blender, or with a pestle and mortar, blitz the chillies, turmeric, coriander, cinnamon, ginger, garlic and salt with 1 tbsp of the oil and 2 tbsp cold water to make a coarse paste. Heat the remaining oil in a heavy-based pan. Add the curry leaves, cloves and onion and fry over a medium heat for 3 minutes.
Add the paste and fry for a minute. Tip in the chicken pieces and fry for 10 minutes on a medium to low heat. Rinse out the blender or mortar that contained the paste with 200ml cold water. Mix this with the coconut milk. Pour over the chicken and mix well. Cover the pan and simmer for 15 minutes or until the chicken is cooked. Garnish with green chillies and serve hot with plain basmati rice.

Kashmiri Spinach

This is a simple dish using few ground spices to spice up fresh spinach leaves. Chopped frozen spinach is ok but this dish tastes much better the fresher the leaves are. The asafoetida adds the garlic and onion flavour to the recipe as there are no onions and garlic in this preparation.

Serves 2-3

3 tbsp sunflower or vegetable oil
Pinch of asafoetida
250g spinach leaves
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp chilli powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp garam masala
1 tsp peeled and finely grated fresh root ginger

Heat the oil in a wok or saucepan and add the asafoetida. When it sizzles, tip in the spinach and fry for 5 minutes until wilted. Add the turmeric, chilli powder and salt, and cook for 3 minutes more.
Add the garam masala and mix in with the ginger.
Serve hot.

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