Curry indiano di pollo

Last year during my 7 months in Singapore I discovered so many new dishes, one of my favorite is Indian… the Indian curry. In Singapore the third largest ethnic group is Indian Singaporeans with 7.9% of the whole population after Chinese Singaporeans with 76.8% and Malay Singaporeans with 13.9%. There is an area in Singapore called Little India, almost like being in India… here I found a lot of nice and interesting spices, a very colorful and live area with small shops and intense perfume of India.

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This recipe comes from an Indian taxi-driver from Singapore... I used to take a taxi every morning to go to work, my trip was about 30 minutes and most of the time it was nice to chat with the taxi-driver and discover new things about Singapore. One morning I met a very nice and funny Indian man that was interested in cooking... we exchanged few recipes... I got his Indian chicken curry and gave him the recipe of the Italian rice salad, which he found a very different and peculiar way to cook and eat rice.

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Just few months ago I bought a rice cooker, which I have to say it is great… it boils the rice at the perfect point and keeps it warm until it is time to eat it. For this recipe I used Jasmine rice, which is my favorite, but you can also use the aromatic Basmati rice, which is the most common rice in India..

The mix of spices I used here is called "Chicken Masala" powder that I bought in Singapore. It is a mix of the following spices: coriander, red chillies, turmeric, dry curry leaves, salt, cinnamon, black pepper, fennel, mace, garlic, onion, cloves, cardamom and ginger. For this preparation I used 5 teaspoons of "Chicken Masala" powder but actually the Indian man who gave me the recipe said: "7 or 8 tsp Masala powder". I think here you have to use as much as you like but remember: "The chicken curry has to be VERY SPICY and HOT!"

INDIAN CHICKEN CURRY

(for 2 people)

Ingredients: 4 pieces chicken, 2 medium size potatoes, 250 ml coconut milk, 1 piece of fresh ginger, 1 garlic clove, 1 small red chilli, 1/2 onion, extra-virgin olive oil, 5 tsp Chicken Masala powder, salt, water (as much as needed).

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Clean and chop in small pieces chili, onion, garlic and ginger. Put them in a pan with some extra-virgin olive oil and cook for 5 minutes. Add a bit of water and continue cooking for 10 minutes. Add the chicken pieces and salt, cook for 10 minutes. At this point you can add the Masala powder, stir and cook for other 10 minutes. At the end add coconut milk, stir once in a while and cook until the chicken is well done and the sauce is thick. Serve with boiled rice.

Info&Research: CURRY.

A curry is any of a variety of distinctively spiced dishes, best-known in Indian, Thai and other South Asian cuisines, but curry has been adopted into all of the mainstream cuisines of the Asia-Pacific area. Along with tea, curry is one of the few dishes or drinks that is truly "pan-Asian", but specifically, its roots come from India. Curry was later brought to the West by British colonialists in India from the 18th century.

The term curry is derived from kari, a Tamil word meaning sauce and referring to various kinds of dishes common in South India made with vegetables or meat and usually eaten with rice. Curry was originally used to mask the taste of bad meat.