My favorite part of living the married life is the fact that I make most of the dinner decisions.

Growing up under the wing of my Ammu and my Nani, there was little you got to do in the kitchen than chop onions and make garlic paste for hours… because you just didn’t get in their way.  Either you anticipated what the next step was before they asked you to do a task in their kitchen… or you got the heck out of their way and buried yourself under the piles of vegetable chopping that was too beneath them to do!

Early on in my married days, I realized I loved to cook. I liked to pin recipes for hours, then study them, then go out and purchase a million different ingredients [that I would use only once].  For the last few years, I have tried my hand at Thai food, Chinese food, Indian, Italian…

Although I LOVED all the recipes I’ve tried, nothing beats a simple Bangladeshi chicken curry.  One of the basic and most common place on a Bangladeshi dinner table, other than RICE of course!

Today I thought I would share with you MY variation – because God forbid anyone tell you the EXACT measurements for ingredients in any particular recipe.  Go on.. ask your Ammu for any method to a recipe… she will reply with

“iktu lobon, iktu holud, morich dite paro, diye nara chara korle.. hoye gelo”

roughly translates to:  “a little salt. a little turmeric, you can put chillies if you want, after just stir a little and –  DONE ”

Um. NO. It’s not that simple! But it’s simple enough.  Simple enough that you can stumble through this recipe and get a pretty decent chicken curry! This is my first recipe on the blog so just humor me.. and if you think I should change it up a bit or have suggestions on how to better write a recipe please leave it in the comments! Here goes!

INGREDIENTS 

• 1/4 cup of olive oil [we try to make things healthier around here… sometimes]
• 1 whole chicken, cut into “curry pieces” [the butcher, can do this for you.]
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 1 – 2 large tomatoes
• 5 cloves of garlic, grated using a micro-plane
• 3 – 4 green chillies
• 1 tbsp red chilli powder
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 3 tbsp salt, more to taste
• 1 tbsp cumin powder
  
• 1 tbsp ginger powder
• 1 tbsp coriander powder
• 1 whole cinnamon stick
• 1 – 2 dried red chilli
• 5 whole cloves
• 5 whole cardamon pods
• 3-4 cups approx. of boiling water
• 2 tbsp tomato paste [optional]
• 1/3 cup of fresh coriander leaves, chopped [optional]

METHOD

1. Wash your raw chicken really well and leave it in a colander to drain.

   

2. Once drained, go through the pieces of chicken to trim off any fat deposits that may be lingering on the meat.  It doesn’t hurt and doing this step will ensure you don’t have extra fat in your dish AND, I’ve noticed that sometimes there is an odd smell that comes from the curry if you leave it. [eww. gross]
3. Get your kettle and get some water boiling.
4. In a wok style pan, add oil and heat.  Add sliced onion and stir and get them sweating a bit.  When they begin to get golden around the edges, add your chicken.

   

5. Once you’ve added your chicken to the pan, add your garlic, green chillies, salt, red chilli powder, turmeric, cumin powder, ginger powder, coriander powder,  coriander powder, break your cinnamon stick and add it in, add your dried red chillies, crush the cloves and cardamon pods a little bit to open up the flavour and dump it right in.  Stir to coat the chicken in the spice.

   

6. Saute the chicken for a good 10 min to make sure the spices are cooking up and breaking down the chicken.  The chicken will begin to give off it’s own liquid which will be the beginnings of your curry.

   

7.  You want to keep stirring every so often because you don’t want the chicken to get stuck on the bottom.
8. After about 10 minutes of sauteing you will notice that the chicken is now cooking in its own liquid. Add enough hot water to the pot to cover the top of the chicken. bring the water to a boil.
9. Add the tomatoes and your tomato paste (optional).

   

10.  Once the water has come to a boil, reduce the heat, cover the pot, and simmer for 10 min.
11. Taste for spice/ salt level and adjust according to taste. let simmer.
12. When you see oil surfacing to the top, add your chopped coriander and take it off the heat and let wilt.
13. Transfer to a serving dish and serve over rice!

ENJOY! <3

Please let me know if you make this recipe.  If you do anything differently, maybe I can try it out! <3