A new dish for me. Using flavours and combinations I’d would have never thought would go together. Having read up on the dish, a pasanda curry has been around for a couple of hundred years way before chilli’s and spices were introduced.

A couple of plus points about this dish. I’ve never cooked an Indian inspired dish using alcohol. This recipe required 125ml of red wine…..which meant the rest of the red wine needed drinking….at this point I could relate to the late great Keith Floyd!! The second plus point was the use of raisins in the dish. It took me back to my childhood…..the old chippy on Arbury Road (which is now Arbury Balti) or Weddington Chippy – old fashioned chip shop curry sauce that had raisins in it, good old fashioned food memory ❤️

This recipe is so easy it’s unreal. Most of the ingredients I’d class as household kitchen ingredients. The dish is a next step up from a korma, if you’ve made a korma you can literally use the remaining ingredients with a few more added to make this dish. The dish takes about 20 minutes to create. This method is completely different to a UK restaurant process as it’s aimed at home cooking for the family.

Ingredients-

4 tbsp of rapeseed oil, 2 onions finely diced, 3 tbsp of desiccated coconut, 3 tbsp of ground almonds, 2 tbsp of sugar, 200g (1/2 tin) of chopped tomatoes, 250ml of chicken stock, 125ml or red wine, 125ml of coconut cream, a good handful of raisins, about 800g of chicken breasts of thighs cut into small bite size pieces which will speed up the cooking, 125ml of single cream, 1 tsp of garam masala & a handful of flaked almonds to serve.

Method –

Heat the rapeseed oil in a large pan. Once the oil is hot add the diced onion. Fry the onion for 5 minutes or so until they become nice and translucent with the kitchen smelling nice.

Once the onions are looking good add in the desiccated coconut, ground almonds sugar giving it a good stir to coat the onions.

Add in the chopped tomatoes and half of the chicken stock giving it a good stir and bring it to a simmer which should take about a minute.

Once it’s come a a simmer, remove from the heat and allow it cool a little. Add the mixture to a hand blender.

Blitz the sauce which again will take about a minute.

Add the sauce mixture back to the same pan and bring back to a simmer.

The sauce will be really thick. Add in the remaining chicken stock and red wine. Mix well and bring to a simmer.

Once the sauce has come to a simmer it’s really important to scrap the caramelised sauce on the sides of the pan back into the sauce. A common mistake is not doing this, this caramelised sauce on the sides contains so much flavour.

Add in the raisins…..

Quickly followed by the coconut cream…..give the pan a good stir and bring back to a simmer.

Add in your chicken pieces and cook the sauce until the chicken is cooked through.

The sauce will again thicken and you can tell the dish is coming together perfectly.

To finish the dish, add the single cream and stir it in.

Follow the cream with the garam masala, at this point I will mention I added a little more than a tsp to the dish. Again mix this in.

This dish is almost finished.

Ahead of serving add the flaked almonds plus again I added a few more raisins.

At the same time as putting the oil on I put a small pan of rice on, brought it to a simmer and left it covered to steam.

I served the pasanda with the steamed rice, shop bought naan breads and a large glass of the red wine. Thank you for reading my ramblings if you have.

Inspired by the legend Dan Toombs.