Express Cooking - Ananda Vikatan : Chicken

17 June 2009 issue of my column in Ananda Vikatan focusses on Simple South Indian Chicken recipes. This post did not please my mom as she was pretty cut up about me cooking chicken !

The next post would offend her even more :)

Simple South Indian Chicken Curries

Chicken is versatile, protein rich, low in fat and calories. It goes well with a huge variety of bases. Researchers say Chicken was first domesticated in India 4000 years back. But   is only with the introduction of the ‘Broiler’ variety that large scale chicken farming became feasible and chicken became affordable. But purists still swear by free range chicken ( Nattu kozhi), which they claim has a much more flavourful meat.
Cooking Chicken: When chicken is cooked first and then added to the curry, it gets cooked very fast. Boneless / minced chicken can be stir fried in 5 – 10 minutes. Bite sized chicken pieces cook extremely fast in a pressure cooker. Just add the chicken pieces (no water needed), close the cooker and cook for two whistles. That’s it!. Marinating before cooking makes chicken more flavourful. Marinated chicken can be pressure cooked exactly the same way.  Mince balls can first be shallow fried or be dropped into the curry straight. They cook in less than 10 minutes. Chicken can also be deep fried and added to curries. In fact instead of chicken you can use mutton / turkey / fish in all the recipes above. Turkey is cooked exactly the same way as chicken. Mutton can be pressure cooked fast but unlike chicken, you need to add a little water and pressure cook mutton for three whistles. Fish slices / crab meat / prawns need no precooking and can be dropped straight into the simmering gravy where they cook in less than 10 minutes.

Baking chicken is not common in south India, though very common in North where marinated chicken is baked into the Tandoori chicken.

Chicken can be cooked as a dry curry or with gravy. The common gravies cooked in Tamilnadu are listed in Column 2. Varutha Kari # 1 is a dry curry with no gravy. Kulambu made from tamarind, Masala made from blended onion-tomato-garlic, Thengapal kulambu from coconut milk, Salna from peanuts and coconut and Kuruma from cashew nuts and coconut paste are commonly cooked. The gravy changes from place to place reflecting local availability and local tastes. In Britain, gravy made from tomato sauce and cream is used to cook chopped tandoori chicken into Chicken tikka masala, Britain’s national dish.  Garlic and vinegar are used to cook up Goa’s chicken vindaloo. Yogurt and mustard oil is used for Bengal’s Chicken Rezala. Malabar’s Nadan Kozhi kari is cooked with coconut milk. Coconut and cumin paste is used as the base for Mangalore chicken Curry, Tamarind is used for Andhra’s koodi pulusu, Cream & nut paste is used in Kashmiri chicken, Pureed spinach is used for chicken saag wala, pureed onions for chicken do pyaza and lentil tamarind curry for the Sindhi curry Chicken Dhansak.  A variety of Readymade chicken masala is now available and all can be easily used to flavour chicken curries. Other flavouring techniques are listed in column 3. Interestingly, even soya sauce is used as a flavouring agent, along with Indian garam masala to cook up Chicken Manchurian. Use the table above to cook dozens of South Indian chicken recipes. Remember, any base above can be paired with any chicken type and any flavouring agent. So choose your combinations and roll out your own recipes!

Cleaning Tips: 1. Wash well and drain chicken before using. 2. Fresh chicken is more tender than frozen. In India, skin is almost always removed while cooking. 3. Removing skin reduces two thirds of fat content. 4. Clean with soap everything that comes into contact with raw meat. Storing: Never leave cooked chicken at outside for over two hours. Refrigerate and eat within two days.

1001 Simple Chicken Curries

This cookbook lists 1000 Chicken curries, greatly simplified, so that a first time cook can easily cook them. The principle is simple – 10 different cuts of chicken are combined with ten different bases and 10 different flavouring techniques to create a thousand different recipes. The cuts of chicken are listed below.

Breast:
The breast of the chicken is almost totally white meat and is usually available as a boneless sheet.

Chicken Mince
This is ground up chicken meat  (Kheema).

Salami / Sausages:
Chicken mince is precooked, mixed with mild spices and is shaped into cylinders. Though not commonly used in Indian cuisine, they can be used for some of the easiest chicken dishes as they require little or no cooking.

Liver
Liver needs to be cooked for a minimum of five minutes on a medium flame to kill harmful bacteria. Soaking it in milk prior to cooking makes it less ‘smelly’

Tenderloin is muscle of the breast, consisting completely of white meat.

Mince balls :
Chicken mince is shaped into small balls and is usually fried or boiled

Lollipops come from the middle of the chicken wing and are usually deep fried.

Leg
The leg of the chicken is made up of the thigh and the drumstick. Both are almost totally dark meat and are cooked the same way. This is the thickest cut of chicken and so needs some marination to make them soft..

Chopped Chicken:
The whole chicken is chopped up into bite sized pieces. This is the cut most used in Indian curries.

For explanation of bases and flavouring techniques, refer 100 chicken recipes.

A note on the dark meat and white meat :
Red meat or Dark meat comes from heavy-use muscles. These are muscles built for endurance and are powered by myoglobin, (the red protein which stores oxygen). The more Myoglobin the muscles have, the redder or darker the meat.

White meat comes from less-used muscles built for quick bursts of energy - these do not contain myoglobin and appear white.

In a chicken the breast muscles are hardly used for flight. So they are white. Flying birds like ducks and geese, have red meat in their breasts. In contrast, the leg of a chicken is completely made of red meat

Fish is mostly white meat, a cow is mostly dark meat and chicken has a mix of both.

Red meat takes longer to cook, but is more flavourful than white meat.

100 Simple Chicken Curries

This cookbook lists 100 Chicken curries, greatly simplified, so that a first time cook can easily cook them. The principle is simple – Chicken is pressure cooked first and this cooked chicken is combined with ten different bases and 10 different flavouring techniques to create a hundred different recipes. The ten different bases are listed below

The curry base :
0.: Onion An extra dose of onions is used as a base in the famous Dopyaza ( Double onion curry)

1.: Cream is used as a base to cook up a mild, rich Muglai style curry, the Muglai Chicken

2.: Nuts / Seeds are blended with milk and used as a curry base in the kitchens of Awadh to cook up the Nawabi Chicken.

3.: Herbs - A variety of herbs are used across India as a curry base. Mint chicken , coriander chicken and gongura chicken are regional delicacies.

4.: Yogurt is cooked until dry and is used as a curry base in the Kashmiri cuisine.

5.: Coconut milk is widely used as a curry base in all the coastal cuisines, especially in Konkan, Goa and Kerala.

6.: Tomato is a widely used curry base across the country.

7.: Tamarind is used as a base in the southern states of Andhra, Tamilnadu and Karnataka to cook Chicken Kulambu.

8.: Boiled pulses are cooked along with chicken to cook up the famous Chicken Dhansak, from the Parsi cuisine

The flavouring techniques :
10 different flavouring combinations are listed in the cookbook. You’ll note that each flavouring technique calls for a different type of oil. However, you can safely substitute refined vegetable oil in place of other oils.

0.: Mustard + Red chili fried in coconut oil is chiefly used in Kerala cuisine

1.: Cumin + Ginger- Garlic is a flavouring common in Muglai cuisine

2.: Mustard + Asafetida fried in sesame oil is commonly used in Tamil cuisine

3.: Panchphoran fried in mustard oil is from the Bengali cuisine

4.: Mustard + Curry leaves + Fenugreek is another southern flavouring technique.

5.: Cloves – Cinnamon with ginger garlic paste and garam masala is common in North Indian cuisine.

6.: Fried & Ground spices The mixture of coriander seeds, pepper and cumin is used across India.

7.: Roast & Ground Spices This particular mix of spices is from the Goan cuisine

10 simple Chicken Curries

This cookbook lists 10 Chicken curries, greatly simplified, so that a first time cook can easily cook them. The principle is simple – Chicken is pressure cooked first and this cooked chicken is flavoured in a variety of ways to give a range of chicken recipes. You can easily cook up three or four different chicken recipes, on demand, with minimal preparation, in 15 minutes.

1.: Ginger Chicken is just chicken cooked with an extra dose of ginger.

2.: Garlic Chicken is for garlic lovers

3.: Pepper Chicken is spicy being cooked with coarsely crushed peppercorns

4.: Pudina Chicken is flavoured with mint paste.

5.: Butter Chicken is a Punjabi curry cooked with butter and cream

6.: Chettinad Chicken is an aromatic chicken cooked in a tangy tamarind – onion- tomato base.

7.: Muglai Chicken is a rich & mild chicken cooked in a base of cashew paste and milk

8.: Chicken dopiaza is for onion lovers and packs in an extra heavy dose of onions.

9.: Pallipalayam Chicken from the Kongunadu cuisine uses simple spices along with copra ( dried coconut)

10.: Chicken Xacuti is the elaborate Goan recipe using a heady mix of roast and ground spices along with coconut milk.