Mughlai Chicken

This past month's supper club theme was "Spice Grab Bag."  Each of us wrote down the name of a spice, put it in a bag, and pulled out a slip of paper.  We each had to make a dish using whatever spice we picked.  At of all the spices out there, we ended up with cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, and three paprikas!  What's even more surprising is how amazing the dinner turned out.  All of the dishes everyone made seemed to complement one another and were really tasty.  I picked cardamom and since we were hosting I decided to make a chicken dish.  I found this recipe on the foodnetwork site.  Nigella Lawson cooked this on her "Spiced Up" episode which I found very fitting.  Plus, it got a lot of really good reviews.  Looking at the recipe list I was a bit daunted....and only for supper club would I even think of cooking something with a ingredient list this long.  But thanks to one of my husband's friends from work, we had a bag of cardamom pods and pretty much everything else minus the almonds to make this.  This is really easy to make and cooks fairly quickly.  I don't cook with chicken thighs very often and didn't know if they'd taste very fatty, which I often find is the case. The results were sooo good!  This dish is really flavorful and the chicken was so tender, which I think is because I ended up cooking this in the Dutch Oven.  We had leftovers for lunch the next day and it tasted just as good.  The kids ate the chicken and rice, although they weren't huge fans.  Unforunately, the dish doesn't photograph that well, as seen below.  And it was just too crazy in the kitchen the day of cooking to get a pic of the dish cooking in the pot.  I served this with a rice dish (see tomorrow's post!). 

Mughlai Chicken
recipe from foodnetwork.com, courtesy of Nigella Lawson, Nigella Feasts

Yield: 8 servings


Ingredients:
1 (1-inch) piece ginger, peeled
4 cloves garlic, peeled
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon dried chili flakes
4 tablespoons ground almonds
1/2 cup water
5 cardamom pods, bruised
1 cinnamon stick, broken in half
2 bay leaves
4 cloves
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 pounds boned chicken thighs, each cut into 2
2 onions, finely chopped
1 cup Greek yogurt
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sultanas (golden raisins)
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup flaked almonds, toasted, to garnish

Directions:
Put the ginger, garlic, cumin, coriander, and chili into a food processor, or into a mortar and pestle, and blend to a paste. Add the ground almonds and water and then blend again, set aside.

Heat the oil in a large pan and add the chicken pieces - in batches so they fry rather than stew - and cook them just long enough to seal on both sides, then remove to a dish.

Add the spices and turn them in the oil. Add the onions and cook them until softened and lightly browned, but keep the heat gentle and stir frequently, to avoid sticking. Pour in the blended paste, and cook everything until it begins to colour. Add the yogurt, half a cup at a time stirring it in to make a sauce, then stir in the stock, cream, and sultanas.

Put the browned chicken back into the pan, along with any juices that have collected under them, and sprinkle over the garam masala, sugar, and salt. Cover and cook on a gentle heat for 20 minutes, testing to make sure the meat is cooked through.

It's at this stage, that I like to take the pan off the heat and leave it to cool before reheating the next day.

So either now, or when you've reheated it, pour into a serving dish and scatter with the toasted flaked almonds.

Mommy & Daddy Rating:  2 thumbs up!