Curry Chicken

 I ushered in my new year at a party organized by KC’s supervisor. They loved Asian food so I thought curry chicken would be a good dish to introduce to the people here. This was my second attempt of cooking curry chicken. The first one was just ‘so so’ because I only used the ready mix curry paste. It’s definitely lack of something very important – the ‘kick’!!

I googled and I was very excited when I found this website Nyonya Food. It had a lot of tasty yet easy recipes for the dishes that I never thought I would want to cook myself. Now that I have no choice, I am really thankful and much willing to give it a try. The original recipe for curry chicken can be found here. I modified according to my accessibility for spices. Though without the curry leaves, I am very satisfied with my curry chicken this time round. It tasted better after reheating as the gravy would thicken. I cooked quite a lot and we ate it with rice, bread, pita bread, naan…

This is the curry paste we used for cooking curry

 

This is the curry I cooked using my modified recipe

This is the curry I cooked using only curry paste. You can notice the obvious color difference, not to mention about the fragrance and flavor *sniff sniff*.

Naan is sold for $2 a piece here. So far, we only had twice ;P

Here is my modified recipe for curry chicken:

Ingredients:

• 6 chicken whole legs (cut in small pieces)
• 4 medium size potatoes (peeled and cut into cubes)
• 100ml thick coconut milk and 100ml milk (I use less coconut milk because I am watching out for my cholesterol level)
• 2 star anise
• 1 cloves
• 1 cinnamon stick (3 inches long)
• 1 lemongrass (cut into 2 inches long)
• 5 tbsp. oil
• 2 cups water (use more if you like it to be more diluted)

Spice Paste (ground):

• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 big onions
• 1 tbsp. turmeric powder
• 1tsp galangal powder
• 2 tbsp. curry powder
• 1 lemongrass (white part only)
• 2-3 tbsp. chili paste
• ¼ pack of curry paste (optional)

Seasoning

• 1 tbsp. salt
• 1 tsp. sugar

Method:

1. Heat up your wok, pour in 5 tbsp oil, sauté cinnamon stick, star anise, cloves and lemon grass, fry over low heat, add in spice paste and stir-fry until fragrant and turn into darker color.
2. Add chicken and potatoes and fry well. Add in water, cover the pot, bring it to boil until chicken and potatoes are cooked well (around 10 min).
3. Transfer everything to crockpot and cook for at least 3 hours on high.
4. Add the thick coconut milk, salt and sugar. Continue to cook on high for 2-3 hours or until the chicken and potatoes become tender. Remove and serve with white rice, bread, nasi kunyit, or roti jala.

Notes: To make it easier, add in coconut milk when you transfer everything into crockpot and let it cook for few hours until chicken and potatoes are tender and the gravy starts to thicken.