Quite a complex dish to make. A tip….never start this in an evening after coming home from work. This is perfect for a Saturday afternoon with some really good tunes on in the kitchen working your magic. Once all the graft is done you can sit back and enjoy this dish with a few cold beers but be prepared to put the work in.

This dish contains three main parts – the marinade, the Chettinad spice mix and the sauce.

First and foremost the marinade. Ingredients- 1/2 tsp of turmeric, 1/4 tsp of Kashmiri chilli powder, juice of 1 lemon, 2 tbsp of natural yogurt, 2 tbsp of garlic and ginger paste. Mix in your chicken pieces and allow them to have a flavour party for at least 30 minutes. Longer the better really.

Second stage the Chettinad spice mix. Ingredients- 25g of grated coconut, 8 cashew nuts which have been soaked in water for 30 minutes then patted dry, 2 tsp of coriander seeds, 2 tsp of cumin seeds, 1 tsp of fennel seeds, 10 black peppercorns, seeds from 3 cardamom pods, 3 cloves, small cinnamon stick broken into pieces.

Once the cashew nuts have been patted dry dry roast them to add a bit of colour on the outside. Remove them from the heat and allow to cool which takes just a few seconds.

Take the remaining ingredients and add them to the hot pan repeating the same process. The kitchen will smell great and you will know you’re onto a winner. I did mine in two batches. The coconut first as this takes seconds to brown up, then the whole spices.

Once the pan roasted mix has cooled slightly add them to a pestle and mortar and grind them all into a powder mix. The cashew nuts and coconut can be then added with 1/4 of a cup of water to make a nice paste. Then set aside.

Now for the sauce. Ingredients- 200g of tinned chopped tomatoes, 2 tbsp of rapeseed oil, 2 onions finely diced, 1/4 tsp ground turmeric, 1 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder, a handful of curry leaves, good pinch of salt and a handful of chopped coriander.

Blend the tomatoes until nice and smooth. Heat the rapeseed oil and fry the onions for 6/7 minutes until nice and translucent. Now I slightly changed the recipe at this stage. I took the chicken from the marinade and gently roasted it to create additional flavours and lovely crispy roasted chicken, or you can add the marinade to the onions and cook with the onions as the marinade will also be released into the sauce.

Add the blended tomatoes, turmeric and chilli powder and the spice paste and cook this out for a minute or so.

Add the curry leaves and give it all a good stir.

At this point I added my pre-cooked chicken, stirred it in to coat the chicken then add 1 1/4 cups of water.

Simmer this for 5/7 minutes. As you simmer it will come together to make a thick sauce. To finish the dish add the chopped coriander.

I served mine with a sticky boiled rice.

Whilst spending the afternoon cooking this delightful dish quite a bit of gin was consumed 😊. Anther recipe taken from the talented Dan Toombs. I love the fact he gains access to the curry houses we all use to write up these recipes.

Thank you for reading my post.