Chicken Shorva

I started drafting this post awhile back and never got to finish it. I was stuck at describing what a shorva is. Many people are not aware of it and even back home, some of my friends didn’t know what it is, until i described it. Once i described it, some called it khorma and some called it pulusu. Pulusu is a tamarind based sauce or gravy and khorma has a thicker consistency than a shorva. I looked up wikipedia to see what it has to say and its description was vague. Some Indian restaurants have shorba on the menu and describe it as a soup. It is a soup with big chucks of meat or vegetables, but the consistency of shorva is not as thin as a soup and it is not as thick as a curry either. It’s consistency is somewhere in between that of  a soup and a curry. Unlike a soup, it is served with rice, roties or any Indian bread, just like a curry.

Traditionally, shorva is prepared by cooking meats or vegetables in a yogurt and onion base with spices such as graram masala, dry coconut powder and khus khus aka gasa gasalu aka poppy seed powder. In last 10-15 years, most of us stopped using poppy seeds in daily cooking due to the health risks associated with it and resorted to alternatives such as onion paste or onion tomato paste. I usually fry onions and whole garam masala spices in some oil and grind it to a fine paste. Once in a while, when I am bored with the recipe I usually follow, I use poppy seed powder or/and coconut powder.

When I prepared chicken shorva this time, I was out of my magic onion paste, which I used in my mutton shorva, and shrimp curry. I was not in a mood to prepare the onion paste and instead, substituted it with finely chopped onions. It turned out fine.

Total Time: 30 minutes
Preparation Time: 5 minutes
Cooking Time: 25 minutes
Serves: 4-5

Ingredients:

• ½ cup Oil
• ¼ tsp Methi/Fenugreek Powder (opt)
• 1 cup finely chopped Onion
• 1 tbsp Ginger Garlic paste
• Garam Masala Powder (grind 2 cloves, 3 cardamoms, ¼” cinnamon)
• 1 ½ tbsp Coriander Powder
• 2 tsp Chili Powder (adjust to taste)
• ½ tsp Turmeric Powder
• 1 Green Onion chopped
• 2 lbs cleaned and cut Chicken pieces marinated with 2 tsp chili powder+salt to taste + ¼ – ½ cup yogurt
• 1 green onion chopped (opt)
• ¼ cup of chopped Cilantro

Preparation:

• In a sauce pan, heat oil, add onion, methi powder and fry for a minute.
• Add ginger garlic paste, garam masala and cook for a minute or 2 until the ginger garlic paste is fried.
• Add coriander powder, chili powder, turmeric and fry for a minute.
• Add marinated chicken and green onion and cook med high – med flame until chicken is tender. This should take about 10 – 15 minutes.
• Add 1- 1 ½ cups of water (forgot to measure the amount of water I added) and bring it to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes.
• Garnish with cilantro and serve hot.
• Serve it with rice, roties, parathas or puri.  Some one once suggested serving it with dosas. I am yet to try this combination .

Note:

• I use whole chicken cut up.  I recommend you use boned chicken rather than a boneless chicken.
• If you like green chili flavor, when you add water to cooked chicken, add 2-3 jalapeno peppers cut in half or long green chilies slit up and continue to cook.  Don’t forget to adjust the chili powder accordingly.

Chicken Shorva is on its way to Curry Mela hosted by Srivalli at Cooking4allSeasons. 

Chicken Pakoda / Chicken Fritters

Chicken pakoda is my entry to the Hot and Spicy Pakora Contest hosted by A perfect bite...  I am reposting this recipe for the event.

Total time: 30 minutes
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 20 minutes
Serves: 3-4

Ingredients:

• 1 lb chicken cut into small pieces (boned or boneless)
• 1 ½ tsp Ginger Garlic Paste
• 1 tbsp Chili Powder
• 1 tsp Garam Masala Powder
• 1 ½ tsp Coriander Powder
• ½ tsp turmeric powder
• Salt to taste
• 1 tbsp Lime Juice
• 1 small Onion chopped
• 1 Green Onion chopped
• 6 Green Chillies chopped
• 10 – 15 Mint Leaves chopped
• ¼ cup Cilantro chopped
• 2 tbsp Besan/Bengal Gram Flour
• 1 tsp Rice flour
• ¼ tsp Baking Powder/ Baking Soda
• 1 Egg
• Oil for deep fry

Method:

• Mix all the ingredients except oil to make a batter.
• Marinate for at least 30 minutes.
• Heat oil in a pan and deep fry the chicken pieces on medium – medium high flame.
• When pakodas turn golder brown, remove from oil, drain on a paper towel.
• Serve hot with any sauce of your choice; chili sauce , hot sauce.

Note:

• You can add some spinach to the chicken batter.

Tandoori Chicken

Who says we need a barbeque grill for enjoying grilled food? I don’t have a patio nor a barbeque grill. But I enjoy grilled food anytime of the year, whenever I am in mood for some grilled food. I use my oven to grill my meats and vegetables and sometimes I do it on the stove top in a grill pan or a griddle. When I saw this months Monthly Mingle theme Grill It!, hosted by Sig, I was hooray!!! I have at least two entries for this event.

My first entry is Tandoori Chicken, which I already have on my blog. I am reposting the recipe for this event.

Total Time: 2 ½ hours
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Marination Time: 2 hours
Cooking Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• Marinade
  • 5-6 Chicken Drumsticks (1-1 ½ lbs)
  • 2 tsp Tandoori Powder
  • 2 tsp Chili Powder
  • Salt to Taste
  • 1 tbsp Ginger Garlic Paste
  • ½ tsp Garam Masala
  • ½ Lime or Lemon Juice
  • ¾ cup Yogurt
  • 1 tbsp Oil
• Oil to baste
• Onion Slices
• Lime Wedges

Method:

• Make incisions or big cuts on the chicken.
• Mix all the ingredients of listed under the marinade.
• Marinate the chicken for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight.
• Preheat the oven to 450F. Arrange the chicken pieces on a grilling pan.
• Spray some cooking oil or baste the chicken with oil.
• Bake for 12 minutes. Turn the chicken, baste with oil.
• Bake for another 5 minutes.
• Serve hot with onion slices and lime wedges.

Note:

• Oven temperatures vary from oven to oven. Make sure you don’t burn the chicken or under cook it.
• I am baking the chicken here but you can use your grill to cook the chicken.
• You can use cut up whole chicken or only leg quarters or only breasts pieces. I personally prefer drumsticks.

Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani

Biryani is one of the most popular dishes in Hyderabad, India. To make Hyderabadi Biryani, the meat and the rice are cooked in an air tight pot on very low flame, so that the rice is cooked in the flavors of meat and gets the aroma of the meat. The meat gets the direct heat from the flame and the rice is cooked with steam generated by the air tight method of cooking, also known as Dum method. It is a length process but the taste is worth going thru the elaborate process.

There are two ways to prepare Hyderabadi Biryani. One is, precooked meat method and the other is raw meat method. In both the methods, meat and half cooked rice are arranged in layers, and cooked until the rice and the meat are fully cooked. For Chicken Biryani, I use the raw meat method and for Mutton Biryani I use the precooked meat method.

Total Time: 1 hours
Preparation Time: 30 minutes (excludes marination time)
Cooking Time: 30 minutes
Serves: 4-5

Ingredients:

• Marinade 
  • 2 lbs Chicken cut up into 2” pieces
  • ½ cup Yogurt
  • 1 1/2 tbsp Ginger Garlic Paste
  • 2 – 3 tsp Chili Powder
  • 2 tsp Coriander Powder
  • 12 small Chilies split into two
  • 1 cup chopped Mint Leaves
  • 1 cup chopped Cilantro
  • ½ tsp Turmeric
  • Garam Masala Powder
    • 10 Pepper Corns
    • 10 Coves
    • ½ tsp Cardamom Seeds
    • ½ tsp Sahajeera or Black Cumin
    • 1” Cinnamon Stick
  • Juice of 1 lime
  • Salt to Taste
• 1 Large Onion sliced
• 1 cup Oil
• ½ tsp of saffron strands
• ½ cup milk
• 4 cups Basmati Rice soaked for 30 minutes
• Spices for boiling rice
  • 6 Cardamoms
  • 3 Cloves
  • 2 Bay Leaves
  • 1 Bay Flower or Biryani Flower
  • 1 tsp Sahajeera
  • ½ tsp Ginger Garlic Paste
  • 1 tbsp of Oil
  • First Full of Salt

Method:

• Clean the chicken and cut it into 2” pieces. Wash the chicken and squeeze all the water from it. This is very important that you squeeze all the water away from the pieces or put it a colander to let water drain away.
• Grind all the ingredients listed under garam masala to a fine powder.
• Mix all the ingredients of the marinade and marinate for at least 1 hour or overnight in the fridge.
• In pan heat oil and fry the onions until light golden brown.
• Soak saffron in hot milk.
• In a big pot bring water to a boil, add all the spices for boiling rice and mix well.
• Add rice and continue to cook until you get a one good boil, i.e rice should roll over with boiling water. It takes about 2 ½ – 3 minutes on my stove. Drain the rice and keep aside.
  

  One good boil after adding rice

• Now its time to arrange chicken and rice in layers, one layer of chicken and two layers of rice. In a heavy bottom sauce pan, pour ½ the oil at the bottom, arrange the chicken pieces and sprinkle some oil on top of the chicken.
• Arrange ½ the boiled rice on the chicken pieces, sprinkle some oil, ½ the fried onions and ½ the saffron milk.
• Repeat the above step for the last layer, I.e, arrange the last layer of rice. Spread the rest of the rice, sprinkle all the oil, fried onions and the saffron milk.
• Now, we need to seal the the container and make it air tight so that the steam doesn’t escape when we cook. In India, flour dough or a big cloth is used to seal the container and the cover together. Here, I use an aluminum sheet. take 2 sheets of aluminum foil (the sheets should be bigger than the diameter of the sauce pan) and place it on top of the sauce pan and then cover it with the lid. We will have aluminum sheets between the pan and its lid. Since we took the sheets bigger than the diameter of the pan, we will use that to seal the pan and the lid.
• Put a heavy object (motor pesto or heavy pan or skillet) on the top of the container, so that the steam doesn’t escape easily. 
  

  Cooking dum biryani with a sealed sauce pan and a heavy object on it

• Cook biryani for 8-10 minutes on high until stream escapes from the foil seal.  Then reduce the flame to medium low and continue to cook for another 20 minutes. 
 Let it sit for 10-15 minutes before opening it. 
• Mix the rice and serve it hot with raita or chicken shorva or mutton shorva.

 

Chicken Biryani

I am sending this recipe to Rice Mela.

Chicken Kebabs

Total Time:
 30 minutes
Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 – 15 minutes
Yields: 20

Ingredients:

• 1 lb Ground Chicken
• Chop or Grind
  • 1 Small Onion
  • 8 – 10 Green Chillies
  • ½ cup chopped Cilantro
  • 10 Mint leaves
• 1 tsp Garam Masala
• 1 – 1 ½ tsp Chili Powder
• 2 tsp Coriander Powder
• 1 tbsp Ginger Garlic Paste
• Salt to Taste
• 2-4 Tbsp Oil

Preparation:

• Finely chop all the ingredients listed under Chop or Grind. I grind it in a mini chopper so that it is coarse.

Method:

• Mix all the ingredients except oil.
• I like to marinate the mixture for at least ½ hour. If you do not have enough time to marinate, go head and prepare the patties.
• Wet your hands with some oil and make round small meat balls and press it flat to make patties.
• Heat pan or a skillet with 1 tbsp of oil. When the pan is hot, transfer the patties to the pan and grill/cook them for about 3-4 minutes on each side until they turn brown. Chicken cooks very fast. You may need to do it in 2 or 3 batches.
• Serve hot with your favorite sauce.