Thursday, May 7, 2009

Indianish Food

Last night I found myself with a couple of chicken breasts and no idea how to prepare them. I was in the mood for some spice but not the Frank's Red Hot kind... I decided to throw together things i had to try to come as close as possible to making an Indian Masala Dish... turns out, not too bad. I would definitely make some substitutions in the future to make the dish more successful but I was quite proud of what I could pull together with no prior indian cooking experience and no recipe to work from. To Sum it all up- I am fucking awesome !

2 chicken breasts
1 tbsp butter
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
1 1/2 cup white wine
1/2 large can tomato puree (in the future I would use fire roasted tomatoes, about 12 oz or so...maybe more)
2 tbsp. cumin
2 tbsp coriander seeds
2 tbsp. black peppercorns
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper
1 cinnamon stick
a couple of whole cloves
tsp. nutmeg
a dash of ground ginger
1 tbsp. curry powder
heavy cream
1/4 bunch cilantro
oil, salt & pepper

1. Heat veg. oil in a large skillet over med-high heat. Season chicken with salt and pepper.
2. Brown chicken on all sides (my breasts were large so i cut them into pieces first..yea I will say it again...my breasts were large)
3. Move chicken to a plate, cover and set aside.
4. Toast all spicesexcept nutme, ginger and curry in another clean pan over high heat for about a minute, don't burn them!
5. Grind down all the spices into a nice powder
4. add butter to chicken pan along with finely chopped onion and garlic. Saute until soft.
5. Add about a cup and a half of white wine. Deglaze pan. Cook for a few minutes.
6. Add in tomato puree or crushed tomatoes whatever...
7. Add about 3/4 of the spice mix
8. Add chicken back in along with any juice on plate.
9. Simmer until chicken is cooked through.
10. Stir in a couple of splashed of heavy cream.
11. Add chopped cilantro and serve over rice.

*some of the measuements may be a bit off*
It should look something like this...


*sorry for the horrible pic, my camera battery died just as I was taking this*

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