This is a wonderful, basic flavoursome dish for the whole family. Simple cooking methods, very few ingredients which makes the whole process easy from start to finish.

As you would expect, taking the recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s cookbook called ‘Curry Easy’ says it all. The recipe is stripped back and so easy to follow. Whilst the dishes I do and have been cooking over the years are more complexed and contain many more ingredients I jumped at this recipe due to its ease, I had all the ingredients in the house plus with it being half term and off work with the way I felt it couldn’t be too taxing !!

Whilst the dish has a slight kick to it for the adults, if you want it to be child friendly just remove the cayenne pepper.

Ingredients –

5 tbsp of rapeseed oil, 2 x 5cm cinnamon sticks, 9 cardamom pods, 750g of chicken fillets, 2 onions finely chopped, 2 cloves of garlic finely chopped, 2 tbsp of ground coriander, 1 tbsp of ground cumin, 1/4 tsp of turmeric, 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper, 2 tomatoes finely diced, 750ml of chicken stock.

Method-

As per normal, heat the rapeseed oil in a heavy based pan. Once the oil is hot add in the whole spices – cardamom and cinnamon. Allow this to flavour the oil for 20 seconds or so.

After 20 seconds add your chicken pieces, do this in batches…as you can see I didn’t 😌

You want to colour the chicken but not cook it through.

After 5 minutes or so remove the chicken pieces in to a bowl but leave the whole spices in the pan with the flavoured oil. Add in your diced onion. Fry this off for 5 minutes or so. You want the edges to start to brown.

Once you’re happy with the onions add in your diced garlic. Stir and fry off for another couple of minutes.

Add in your whole spices……..

Quickly followed by your chopped tomatoes….

Give the pan a big stir coating everything together. Cook the tomatoes until they soften, about a couple of minutes.

Add back to the pan the chicken pieces along with any cooking juices.

Add the chicken stock. You want this to cook down and reduce. Ideally this can be done in 15 minutes or so if you have a heavy pan with a lid. Sadly I don’t own one. As I like a thick sauce I cooked mine down for 25 minutes.

The sauce is starting to cook down…..

The finished sauce / gravy below is nice and thick.

I served mine with pre-made steamed rice. Again same method as always. 1/2 a cup of rice (two people) and 1 cup of water, brought to a simmer, simmered until the water just disappears under the rice, remove from the heat and leave covered for 20 minutes or so as it will steam itself.

At the minute cooking is very important to me. On the verge of hitting 48 in May and feeling a little lost. The writing and cooking helps me focus.

Thank you for reading my post if you have.