Chilli Chicken Andhra Style?

This tasted more or less same (better?) to the andhra style chilli chicken you get at some of the Andhra restaurants in Bangalore. Here it goes:

Ingredients:

1.) Chicken small-medium pieces - 1 Kg
2.) Pepper powder - 1/2 tbsp
3.) Lemon - 1
4.) salt to taste (under 1/2 tbsp recommended)
5.) Onions - 5
6.) Ginger garlic paste - 2 tbsp
7.) Cloves - 3
8.) Cardamom - 2
9.) Cinnamon- 1"stick
10.) Corainder powder - 1/4 tbsp
11.) Turmeric power - 1/4 tbsp
12. ) Cooking oil - 1/2 cup
13.) Green Chilli - 10-12 - cut in length, then in half.

Procedure:

1.)
a.) Mix well items 1-4 (chicken, lemon juice, salt, pepper), pressure cook till the first steam in medium flame.
b.) Once cooked, open and put in the corainder & turmeric powder. Keep aside.

2.)
a.) Use the mixie to make a paste of the onion, ginger-garlic. Ground items 7,8,9 (cloves, cinnamon, corainder powder) and mix it with the onion paste.
b.) Heat the oil, put in this onion-masala paste and cook in low'est flame for 20-25 minutes with lid on, stirring occassionaly. (the idea is not to make the onions brown, but to cook in while it absorbs the masala flavor)
c.) Put in the cooked chicken into this. Stir.
d.) Mix in the cut green chilli's, stir on high flame for 2-3 minutes.
e.) Close lid, let it stay on the stove for a minute or two.

Serve hot!

Beef Groncu

This beef recipe ended up as a hit with our guests over the many fish preparations by my sis, mom, wife. Thought its best to narrate it too; especially if some poor man wants to impress his roaring wife (and vice-versa)

Stuff Required:

1. 1 kg fresh beef cut to small pieces
2. cooking oil (us Keralites prefer coconut oil) for caramelizing the onions.
3. 10-12 green chillies cut in length, then midway.
4. Two handful of curry leaves [make it four if your hand cannot hide an egg ]. We need lots of this.

For cooking the beef :

5. 1.5 table spoon vinegar
6. 1.5 table spoon red chilli powder
7. 0.5 table spoon turmeric powder
8. 1.5 table spoon coriander power
9. 0.5 table spoon pepper powder
10 Salt to taste

11 A cup of water

12. 3 onions chopped to small pieces
13. 4 onions cut in length.
14. half table spoon of whole mustard

[just realized that I appear to use the table spoon quite a bit; but then it does serve the purpose]

Start cooking :

Mix items 5 - 11 in a pressure cooker, then cook the beef for 5 - 6 whistles. Heat the cooking oil in medium size kadaai. Put in the mustard and when they pop add the onions (item 12) to it. Stir in low flame until the onions turn medium brown (should take 20-25 minutes).

Add the cooked beef from the cooker, straight into this. Put on medium flame and cook for another 20-30 mins. Towards the end of this routine, we want to crush the beef using a heavy spatula until the beef ends up as strands.

Turn to low flame, add in the curry leaves, green chillies and the onions (items 3,4,13). Mix the entire stuff for around a minute (and not too long). The core idea here is that we don't want the chillies, onions, curry leaves to over-cook.

Turn off the flame, close the kadai and leave it for 5-8 minutes. We need to wait for the flavor of curry leaves and chillies to spread through the beef.

Serve with rice and enjoy the comments :)

Now for the name - GReen chillies ONions CUrry leaves - Groncu.

Recipe - Fish curry (Kerala)

Thought I should start blogging few of my experiments in the kitchen which went right (things that tell me it went right - tongue says its good, the vessels get empty soon , the stomach doesnt complain even 8 hrs after consumption and most importantly, I live to blog this)

All good. Now for one of my recent experiment which I had wanted to perform since long - Kerala style fish curry (red) with tamarind. The one which every mallu should be familiar with - the one your mom or wife cooked each day and you ate. This time, I took over the kitchen with much anguish to my wife. Its a different story that the taste of these dishes cool her down ;)

Things you need:

Sliced fish pieces (preferably seer or pomfret) with the skin removed - 1/2kg
Red chilli powder - 3 tablespoon
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tablespoon
Pepper powder - 1/4 tablespoon
Fenugreek powder - 1/4 tablespoon
Ginger garlic paste (dabur works for me) - 4 tablespoon
Curry leaves - around 8 leaves chopped
Mustard - 1 tablespoon
Cooking oil (coconut oil preferably) - 4 tablespoon
Dry tamarind - 4 or 5 medium pieces
Salt - to taste
Water - 5 cups (we need to sink the fish the first time we put them in)

Getting there:

Though its best to cook this in an earthenware which appears to change the taste tremendously, you might as well cook it in any of the medium sized kadai/vessel you have. Heat the oil till it smokes a bit before you put the mustard in. Mustard usually burst quick if the oil is hot enough and all of them turn silent once they are done with their bit of bursting. Its now time for the ginger garlic paste to make their sounds and they take around 3 minutes to calm down. They usually turns light brown at this point.

Put the red chilli powder , fenugreek powder, turmeric powder and pepper powder into the mustard+garlic paste while bringing the flame a notch down. Once you get the smell of the hot chilli powder in a few moments, its time to pour in the water and up the flame. Layer the fish pieces into this water base and let it come to a boil.

When the water is boiling good, put the tamarind pieces, curry leaves and salt. Leave the vessel closed and on medium flame for another 10 mins.

Once you start to get the smell of the cooked fish across the room, you would want to lower the flame such that the gravy thickens to your liking. Be careful not to overcook the fish in this case - you definitely want the fish to retain its shape while serving.

All good. Its time to experiment your food on anyone around. If you did follow until here, you have in vessel an authentic Kerala fish curry. Simple ain't it?