Chicken Rezala

03/01/2021 TanviLeave a comment

A slow cooked creamy, mughlai inspired chicken dish from the east indian cuisine. Chicken rezala is a royal curry of chicken cooked in a white gravy fragrant with spices and creamy due to addition of ground cashew & poppy seeds paste. There is no cream or milk used. In the original form, mutton is used in rezala but I prefer using chicken.

The best thing about mughlai cooking is the use of exotic yet delicate and rich flavors. The gravy is thin, its not saucy, its slightly on the sweeter side, tangy from whole yogurt and creamy from the nut paste. The rezala dish has complex yet mild flavors.

The heat comes from ground white pepper and green chillies, there is no use of turmeric or red chilli powder. The thin layer of fat that separates from yogurt, chicken, fried onions and ghee used in cooking is indicative of its authenticity and rich taste.

I did not grow up eating this dish but after getting married, I really got interested in Bengali cuisine and this is one of the gems of the cuisine. Bengali cooking is complex, it teases your palate and caters to your senses with the use of mellow fragrant spices.

A few things to be kept in mind when making rezala.

Don’t make rezala with boneless chicken. Use bone in chicken and choose to slow cook for about 45 minutes to 1 hour till the chicken is cooked rather than pressure cooking it.
Always marinate the chicken.
You can replace the cashews with blanced almonds if you wish.
If you not every finicky about color, use black peppercorns in the recipe, the curry will be less sharp and darker in color.
Use ghee for cooking, it gives an authentic taste.
White peppercorns have a sharp taste compared to the black ones, be sure to check the taste to sauce as you add it so as to not land up with a very spicy sauce. The rezala has a mild sweetish taste.

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5 from 1 vote

Chicken Rezala

A nutty, delicately flavored chicken dish from East indian cuisine.

Prep Time6 hrs

Cook Time1 hr

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Indian

Equipment

Bowls, Dutch Oven or Heavy Bottom Pot with lid

Ingredients

Marinate The Chicken

1.5 lb (750gms) bone in, skinless chicken, (choose 1 whole chicken cut in 8pieces OR Chicken legs Or bone in Chicken Thighs
3/4 cup plain full fat yogurt (not greek yogurt)
2 tbsp ginger garlic paste
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp white pepper powder adjust to taste
1 tbsp melted ghee

For the Spice Powder

2 black cardamom pods only
8 green cardamom pods only
2 large mace twigs
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tsp white peppercorns adjust to taste

For Making the rezala

2 tsp white poppy seeds
15 raw whole cashews
4 tbsp ghee
6 dried red chillies
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 black cardamom
2 inch cinnamon stick
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup white or yellow onion paste
1 tbsp green chilli paste adjust to taste
1 tsp shah jeera
1 tbsp ginger garlic paste
Salt to taste
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp white peppercorn powder optional
10-12 saffron strands, soaked in warm milk
1-2 drops kewra water, optional

Instructions

Marinate the Chicken

Add the cleaned chicken pieces to a large bowl and add all the listed ingredients. Using your hands massage the chicken pices nicely with yogurt, ghee nand spices. Cover the bowl with a cling film and marinate overnight (6-8 hours). Dont skip the marination step.

Make The Spice Powder

In a small skillet, lightly dry toast all the spices. Place in a spice grinder and grind to a powder. Set aside.

Make the curry

Set the marinated chicken out of the refrigerator at least 1 hour prior to cooking.
In your wet grinder, add the poppy seeds first, add 3 tbsp water and give it a grind. Open and add cashews along with 3 tbsp of water. Grind both the things on high speed to a very fine paste. Add water if needed.
In a heavy bottom pot or dutch oven, add the ghee and warm it up on medium heat.
Temper the ghee with all the whole spices and saute for 30 seconds. Take care that the spices do not burn.
Add the onion paste next and on low medium heat saute the onion paste till you its beginning to change to light brown in color and the oil is separating. Dont let the onions brown too much.
Add cumin seeds and the ginger garlic and chilli paste next and saute for a minute till you smell a nice aroma.
Reduce the heat to low, wait for a minute and slowly add the marinated chicken to the pot. Also add the ground spices we made earlier. Gently stir the chicken continously for 2 minutes. Let the stove be on low while you stir the chicken. This will make sure that the yogurt wont curdle.
After stirring for 2 minutes, cover the pot and let cook undisturbed for 10 minutes on low heat.
Open the pot, stir the chicken, you will see a gravy forming from water of yogurt and chicken juices. Add the cashew-poppyseeds paste we made along with salt & sugar. Stir to combine , cover the pot and let cook again for 15 minutes on medium low. While the chicken is cooking just check once or twice to make sure that nothing is sticking to bottom of pot since cashew have the tendency to stick.
At the end of 15 minutes, open the pot. You will see a layer of fat on the sides and top of the chicken. Make sure that the chicken pieces are cooked through but not falling apart. Depending on the quality of your chicken the time taken can be anywhere from 15 minutes to 25 minutes.
At the end of cooking, check and adjust the salt if needed. Add the saffron, kewra and white pepper powder. Mix and let the curry simmer for 2-3 more minutes. Switch off the stove and let stand for atleast 30 minutes before serving.
The sauce of rezala is not runny at all so no extra water is added so please dont add any water, it will dilute the taste of the sauce.
Serve with rotis. parathas or rice, as you wish.

Notes

Don’t make rezala with boneless chicken. Use bone in chicken and choose to slow cook for about 45 minutes to 1 hour till the chicken is cooked rather than pressure cooking it.
Always marinate the chicken.
You can replace the cashews with blanced almonds if you wish.
If you not every finicky about color, use black peppercorns in the recipe, the curry will be less sharp and darker in color.
Use ghee for cooking, it gives an authentic taste.
White peppercorns have a sharp taste compared to the black ones, be sure to check the taste to sauce as you add it so as to not land up with a very spicy sauce. The rezala has a mild sweetish taste.

Sambar (Indian Lentil & Vegetables Stew)

02/25/202102/27/2021 TanviLeave a comment

Sambar is an utterly popular slow cooked south indian lentil and vegetable stew which is served with idlis, dosa, vada or steamed rice. It is fragrant, nourishing and very comforting. Lentils form a huge part of indian cuisine and every region has its own speciality. Sambar is an everyday dish of the south indian region and over years because of its delicious taste and nutrient dense value, it has become one of the most popular dishes in India.

However, in our north indian family, south indian food was made once or twice a month. It was a special meal and the preparations started a couple days ahead with mom fermenting idli batter and making chutneys. Her sambar recipe is the best if you ask me. I dont claim it to be the authentic for it differs in the selection of vegetables and the way she tempered it. So unlike the drumsticks and squash loaded ones, I grew up on sambar in which went chunks of capsicum(green bell pepper) and green beans and sometimes okra or eggplant. It was a warming, soul satisfying and a beautiful medley of flavors of sambar powder and taste of vegetables.

I make sambar like mom, with the same selection of vegetables. Be it the contrasting sweetness of jaggery and sour of fresh squeezed tamarind pulp or the chewy pungency of black mustard seeds and a subtle citrus nuttiness of curry leaves, every single slurp rings comfort into my soul..

Mom used store bought sambar powder and I do the same. We have a few favorite brands and I stock up on those whenever I go to India or someone is visiting. I sometimes find it in our indian store as well, its a pretty easy thing to find. However, if you do not have ready to use sambar powder, leave a comment and I will write you a recipe.

Many people like to use a blend of lentils but I make mine with just arhar daal (toor/pigeon pea lentils). Sambar is a easy thing to make and tastes better next day or after resting if you are serving the same day. You can prep the vegetables and make tamarind pup while the lentils are cooking(I pressure cook them) and just temper everything and simmer it for about 10-12 minutes.

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5 from 1 vote

Sambar

A flavorful,south indian pigeon pea lentil & vegetable stew. Best served with idlis, vada, dosa or steamed rice. Can be easily made vegan.

Prep Time30 mins

Cook Time1 hr

Course: Main Course, Soup

Cuisine: Indian

Equipment

Pressure Cooker, Cooking Pot

Ingredients

For Boiing The Daal

1 cup arhar daal (toor daal/pigeon pea lentils)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
2.5 cups water

Vegetables (substitute with your choice of vegetables)

1 small capsicum/green bell pepper cut into bite size pieces
12-15 green beans cut into 1 inch long pieces
1 medium firm tomato quatered
6-8 sambar onions/pearl onions peeled

Tempering The Sambar

3 tbsp oil/ ghee I use avocado oil
1 tsp black mustard seeds
3/4 tsp chana daal (bengal gram lentils)
3/4 tsp split urad lentils
1/4 tsp hing
2-3 dried red chilies
Pinch methi seeds
12-15 fresh curry leaves
2-3 tbsp thick tamarind pulp adjust to desired sourness
2.5 tbsp sambar powder
1/2 tsp red chilli powder
Salt to taste
1 tbsp jaggery powder adjust to desired sweetness

Instructions

Boil The Daal

Wash the lentils throughly 2-3 times under a running stream of water.
Place in the pressure cooker. Add 2.5 cups water and turmeric. Soak for 20 minutes.
Once soaked, pressure cook the lentils in the same water for 3-5 whistles on medium heat. Switch off and let pressure release naturally. While the lentils are still hot, add salt and using a wooden masher or back of spoon mash the lentils well so that no grain is visible. Set aside.
While the lentils are cooking you can prepare the vegetables and tamarind pulp. Keep everthing ready.

Make the Sambar

In a heavy bottom pot,warm up the oil. Temper the oil with mustad seeds. Once they crackle, add the hing, chana & urad dal. Cook till the lentils are browned in color.
Add the dried chillies and methi seeds next. Saute fo r5-6 seconds till they swell a bit.
Add curry leaves to the oil, they will immediatley splutter so be careful. Saute for 2-3 seconds and add all the vegetables that you are using at once. Sprinkle a pinch of salt. Saute the vegeatble for a minute or so with the spices.
Next sprinkle the sambar powder and red chilli powder (if using) and saute for 20 seconds.
Add the cooked mashed lentils next and mix well. If you feel that they are thickish, add water to thin out as per desired consistency.
Mix well and let come to a slow boil on medium heat. Reduce the heat and add the tamarind and jaggery. Taste and adjust the salt. Mix well.
Let simmer for 10-12 minutes on low medium heat stirring a bit in between. Initially you will see that there is a layer of foam on the sambar but as it cooks out, the color will deepen so will the flavors. Rest for 30 mins and serve warm!

Extra Tempering (optional but recommmended)

Heat 1 tbsp oil or ghee in a pan and add 1/2 tsp mustrd seeds,pinch of hing, 1-2 dried chillies and 8-10 curry leaves. Add on top of the cooked sambar and mix well.

Appetizers/Snacks · Brunch · Indian Curry/Stew · Indian Streetfood/Indo Chines

Hot & Sour Chicken (Indo Chinese)

05/19/201507/19/2020 Tanvi18 Comments

If you asked me about what eating out during childhood years meant, I would have nothing vivid to recollect about fine dining and celebratory dinners. Except for may be the street foods which we gorged on every other evening at Arun Chaat Bhandar, a tiny one room eatery which had been around ever since I have known,the restaurant trips were rare. More so because my grandmother and mother had this undying wish to recreate all kinds of food in their kitchen and less because eating out was not as big part of the indian culture during the 1980s as it is now-a-days. You can gauge that from the fact that whenever I tell my mother about anything non indian food that my daughter likes her play school, she asks me to look up the recipe on internet and cook it for her. ‘Ghar par hi bana do, accha rahega“, cook at home, it will be far better in taste, she tells me. Well, we will keep it for another day as to how I go about her suggestions (wink!) but coming back to my chidlhood days, other than the chaat corner, the other place that me and my siblings looked forward to was indo chinese food at ‘Sabus‘, a neon red-painted food van permanently situated at the front of the back wall of an old housing complex, itched with graffiti of an indian comic character, Sabu, a monstrous alien from planet Jupiter, huge & strong, bald and muscular,always wearing gumboots. It would be slightly untrue to state that we loved eating at that van just because of the noodles, there was more fun in the form of free stickers, liquid filled transparent chopsticks and cheap stamps if you placed a large order. Unlike the food trucks in the States, that red van without tyres was a lot dilapidated, with a much tamed down kitchen as far as cooking facilities & techniques available, but the food from there made sure that the street infront always smelled of soy & spices. You know that burnt, fermented savory ‘stink’?, when the soy bubbles & splutters when as soon as it hits the hot as volcano wok, that! As I write this, I can still remember the taste of food there from some 20 years ago, of the greasy chowmein and the scarlet colored chilli chicken. “It’s all in the wok”, the little Nepalese guy with golden hair and wrinkly forehead replied whenever questioned about his recipes or where he got his condiments.

My mom has been making this hot and sour chicken for so many years, the only difference being that she serves it with a runny sauce than what we ate at Sabus. I follow her recipe mostly except that I do not deep fry the chicken, rather lightly sear it before proceeding to make the sauce.This recipe is more of for an appetizer or starter course than the mains, however the husband insists on combining it some steamed jasmine rice each time. Any which way, the way that garlic & hot chili laced sauce with hints of tomato, soy and fresh cracked black pepper combines with vinegar soaked succulent morsels of chicken is just too delicious. Try it!

A tangy fusion dish of vinegar soaked chicken stirred with garlic – chili paste, soy and spices.

1 lb boneless chicken thighs,skinless
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon red chilli powder (adjust to taste)
1/2 tbsp dark soya sauce ((I use Ching’s brand)
1/2 tsp salt
1 teaspoon black pepper, fresh cracked
1.5 tablespoon white vinegar
2-3 tablespoon of oil (for skillet frying)

Notes:

Use tofu, paneer and assorted vegetables for a vegetarian version of this recipe.
If you would like to deep fry the chicken before adding to the sauce, mix 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour and 1 tablespoon corn starch when you marinate.

For the Sauce

6 fresh garlic pods
2 whole fresh Fresno chillies (or any hot chili pepper, adjust to tolerance, de seed if you like )
2 teaspoon dark soya sauce (I use Ching’s brand)
2 tablespoon chilli tomato sauce (I use Maggi Hot & sweet, substitute with Sriracha & 1/2 teaspoon cayenne, or use 1.5 – 2 tablespoons Sambal oelek )
1.5 tsp honey (or brown sugar, adjust to taste)
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 teaspoon pure, untoasted sesame oil (optional but recommended)
1 teaspoon corn starch
1/2 cup chicken/vegetable stock or water
3-4 tbsp oil (I used sunflower, use any neutral oil)
5 scallion stalks, white & green cut separately
1/2 cup red onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup fresh tomatoes, finely chopped
3/4 tsp red pepper flakes (adjust to tolerance)
Salt to taste
1.5 – 2 tbsp white vinegar (adjust to taste, or use a few dashes of balsamic vinegar)
For Garnish – chopped scallions(green parts)

Method

Preparation

Clean the chicken, pat it dry. Cut the cleaned chicken into bite size pieces. Rub it with garlic, chili, soy sauce, salt & pepper, vinegar and let sit for about 25-30 minutes.

While the chicken is marinating, using your mortar and pestle or mini processor, crush the garlic and Fresno chillies to tiny bits.You could use some water if required for blending.

In a small bowl, mix up the soy sauce, chili tomato sauce, honey and sesame oil(if using). In another bowl, mix the cornstarch with the stock and set aside.

Cooking

In a wide skillet (I used my 12″), heat up 2-3 tbsp of oil on high. Pick up the marinated chicken pieces, shake to release vinegar and layer on the skillet and let sear on both sides, flipping in between. Make sure that the chicken pieces cook all the way through. This may take about 7-8 minutes or more depending on the size of pieces.

Once done, transfer the chicken pieces to a plate and reserve the drippings in the skillet itself.

Add the 3 tbsp oil into the same skillet and heat it up on medium. Add the crushed garlic chili paste and fry up these for 20-30 second or so till you smell the aroma. Be careful that the garlic does not burn (else it will be bitter). Next add the chopped onions and scallions (white parts) and cook on medium high for 3-4 minutes or till light brown in color. Add the tomatoes next and let cook till they begin to soften. Next, add the ginger along with the soy sauce mix made earlier, let cook for 3-4 minutes till everything starts looking glossy or till you see bubbles on the sides. Next, add the cornstarch mix to the skillet. Reduce the heat to low and let everything simmer for another 2-3 minutes till the sauce thickens slightly.

Next, taste & adjust the salt in the sauce. Sprinkle the red chili flakes & vinegar to the skillet and stir everything well. Add the chicken & toss so that the pieces are evenly coated.

Garnish with chopped green scallions & serve immediately.