Dry Curry Chicken

After church today,  I came back to a house that smell like a curry house ....mmmm I thought it was my neighbor cooking curry and to my surprised the smell was strong when I entered the house. And guess what ?  The wild boar raided my kitchen while I was in church !!!  I forgave him for the mess he did to my haven when he served me the best dry curry chicken.....for my lunch .  

So to reward him, I invited him to be my guest blogger and share his recipe with you ......... frankly speaking, I don't mind if he wants to take over my role in the house for the weekend ....anyway, my Piggies loves his cooking so I think I can hand over my apron to him for the weekend ! What do you guys think ?  Is it advisable when he mess up my kitchen and I have to do the cleaning after him ? 

Hi ,

This is the Wild Boar once again rummaging in the Kitchen. Its becoming a habit of late for me to satisfy a craving to cook up something. I find cooking to be quite therapeutic as well as entertaining. To me its like the urge to produce a piece of art based on whatever inspiration I may have received during the week . It may sometimes turnout horribly bad and fit for the dustbin or it may turn out surprisingly nice. I have to credit my late mother who was instrumental in developing the interest in me to cook. I do remember those young days age about 10 when I first cooked my bowl of “Japanese Mee” or what is commonly known today as instant packet mee or Maggi Mee under the watchful eyes of my mom. And even till now I have this sudden burst of inspiration to whip up something simple and nice.

So for today while waiting for my other  half side of bacon also known as my wifey  to come back from church , I decided to surprise her with Dry Curry Chicken Drumsticks. The mischievious wild boar has been deviously and secretly gathering ingredients from the town market on our last visit to the town central market. I normally don’t like shopping there as it stinks but then only some stuff are easily found there for example the premixed curry paste. This stall has been around for umpteen years since as a small little cute wild boar following after my mother to do her marketing some 40 years ago. This stall is located just next to where u would normally go buy beef in the town fresh market. You need to tell her you want to buy curry paste for meat and she would just scoop all the premix for you to form just the correct mixture of ingredients. Now, what is more important is to go back home and fortify with additional ingredients which I will describe as below :-

1.      1 packet of curry paste premix from town market about a dollars worth

2.      100g of peeled and pounded or finely ground shallots

3.      50g of garlic also ground up ( you can use a mini mincer if u have one )

4.      About a kilogram of meat in this case I use Chicken Drumsticks

5.      A small packet of thick coconut milk …. Optional but I used a little bit

6.      3 or 4 sticks of fresh lemon grass cut into one inch lengths

7.      3 sprigs of Curry Leaves ….. Very Important

8.      Some cooking Oil about 6 tablespoons and half a cup of chicken broth/chicken cube

9.      Do Not Add Salt …… the curry paste is already salted !

                                                         10.   And I said a small little prayer ….. Optional hahaha 

1.      

Okay, now we need to fry up the curry fragrance and this is simple just put in the ground shallots, lemon grass and garlic into medium hot oil and fry for about 2 minutes immediately after add the curry paste and continue frying for another 2 minutes. Please take care the fire must be low or it will burn up fast. Then quickly strip down all the curry leaves into the now fragrant mixture. You will observe in about 6 minutes of gentle frying and continuous stiring that the mixture will turn into a reddish brown aromatic thick paste.

Its now about time to add in the chicken and continue cooking on very low heat stirring every 5 minutes to make sure that all is well. The chicken should be cooked in about 40 minutes. Half way till being cooked you may now add a drizzle of coconut milk taking care not to turn the dish into a watery curry.

Of course its no harm if it becomes watery curry version but my mission for today was to cook a dry curried version of chicken. 

To be more specific I aimed to cook it into a very  thick curry gravy which I succeeded perhaps thanks to the optional prayer I muttered before I started cooking this dish hehehe.

I need to admit the results were better than I had expected and the whole house smelt of curry when my other side of bacon came back. Knowing her I already snapped a few dozen pictures of the cooking process for her to choose the best picture if she wanted to use in her blog.

To some of her oversea readers you can find the curry paste and ingredients from the equivalents of Asian Markets and Grocers . I do remember seeing all this ingredients in my last trip to the States  in 2008 and there was one in the locale of Sommerville, New Jersey where I stayed . Most of this asian markets will have limited stock of all the items and are packed and frozen. Imagine if you can find belacan in the States the chances of finding curry paste is a reality. I even saw Thai durians as whole fruits in one of this markets. There is also a very well stocked Asian Section in a supermarket called Wegmans in Branchburg, New Jersey and I was sure my other side of bacon would just love that supermarket. Needless to say the Wild Boar was  busy sniffing away at the fantastic spread of TV Dinners which was very very affordable even in USD prices, hahaha .

Anyway, that’s all for now till I am invited again..... 

                                       ..........cheers from the Wild Boar :)

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