For last few years, I have been making something simple like pasta, sandwiches, pulavs etc for lunch that I can easily pack for Ishaan. So I usually make Indian dishes for dinner. But lately once in a while the child asks “ani sheet? (rice again)?” or “chupati nakka aaji (I don’t want chapati)”. So I am consciously trying to make something different. He also was asking for chicken, so I decided to make this baked chicken which I had seen many times on TV. I served it with a simple bulgar wheat salad. We all loved how juicy, tender and delicious the chicken turned out.
Ingredients: 4 large pieces of chicken thighs 1 cup thick buttermilk (or use yogurt thinned and beaten well) 1/2 tea spn chilli powder Olive oil 1/2 cup parmesan cheese 1/2 cup Italian breadcrumbs 1/2 tea spn each of dried oregano, parsley Salt
Method: Add chilli powder and salt to buttermilk and mix well. Add the chicken pieces to it and keep it aside for few hours (I refrigerate it). Heat the oven at 375 for 10mins. On a dry plate, mix cheese, breadcrumbs, oregano, parsely. Roll the chicken pieces in the dry mix. Spread some olive oil on a oven safe dish (I used cast iron pan) and keep chicken pieces on it. Bake the chicken for 15mins and then turn and bake another 15 mins. (The time depends on thickness of chicken, so for first few times, check if it is cooked after 10mins). Serve hot.
Few days ago I posted chicken nuggets recipe here. I had bought some ground chicken and half of it remained after making nuggets. It was those days when the child was refusing to eat chicken. I thought of making a different curry/gravy with it to see if he gives it a try. I made small balls out of the ground chicken, shallow fried and added them to gravy. It came out great and he wanted to try the balls – he called them soccer balls :). Ingredients for chicken balls: 1 lb (approx 0.45kg) ground chicken breasts 1 tea spn thick yogurt 1 tea spn chilli powder 1/2 tea spn garam masala 1 tbl spn finely chopped ginger 1 tbl spn finely chopped garlic 1 tbl spn finely chopped coriander leaves Oil Salt
Method: Add yogurt, chilli powder, garam masala, ginger, garlic, coriander leaves and salt to chicken and leave it aside in refrigerator for 30mins-1hr. Heat a tava (I used cast iron) and spread some oil. Make small balls of the chicken mixture, shallow fry them for few minutes. They don’t have to cook completely, just make sure they get browned. Keep them aside.
Ingredients for gravy: 1/2 cup finely chopped onion 1 cup finely chopped tomatoes 1 tea spn chopped ginger 1 tea spn chopped garlic 2 cloves 1″ cinnamon 1 bay leaf 2 cardamoms 1/2 tea spn cumin seeds 1/2 tea spn cumin powder 1/2 tea spn coriander powder A pinch turmeric 1/2 tea spn chilli powder Oil Salt
Method: Heat oil and add cloves, cinnamon, bay leaf, cardamoms, cumin seeds. Then add chopped onion, ginger, garlic and a little salt. Cook for few minutes till the onions soften. Then add cumin and coriander powder, chilli powder, turmeric, fry till a nice aroma comes out. Add tomatoes, cover and cook till they soften. Take half the amount and grind to a smooth paste (grinding is optional, I do it to get some smooth gravy). Add the paste back to remaining tomatoes, onion mixture. Now slowly add the chicken balls and cook till they are completely done. Serve hot.
I am camera-less for next couple of weeks. I was way too excited to post something last time and even after many reminders from V, I was not very careful with handling the SD card. It got broken and stuck in the SD card slot. Looks like it was pretty bad and we had to take it to repair shop to get it fixed. Not sure how I am managing to mess up things these days!. First I lost my phone and now this. So that means, I cannot click any new pictures for few weeks. I also can’t access any of the pictures I clicked in last few weeks – Grrr I should have transferred them to laptop!!. Luckily I have few pictures I had saved earlier which needs to be posted and I am very lucky to have amazing parents who have a huge hand in keeping this space alive and going. Â They promised they will post something whenever they can. Anyway, sorry for that rant, now that it is off my chest, I feel good :).
Coming to this recipe, I am making a conscious effort to make atleast one chicken dish a week. Somehow I love to try new recipe every time, than sticking to one tried and tested recipe. I usually end up at Sig’s blog for chicken dishes or try something completely new by adding different ingredients. Some of my experiments in last few weeks were big hits with my family and friends. Tomato chicken with whole spices is one such recipe. Ingredients: 1 lb chicken 1/2 cup onion 1 and 1/2 cups chopped tomatoes (about 3 large ones) 1 tea spn chopped garlic 1/2 tea spn pepper powder 2 cloves 2 cardamoms 1 bay leaf 2″ stick cinnamon 1 tea spn slightly crushed coriander seeds 1/2 tea spn cumin seeds 1 tea spn chilli powder 4-5 leaves of mint Oil Salt
Method: Cut chicken into small pieces and add salt and pepper to it. Heat little oil, add chopped garlic. Add the chicken pieces and let them cook till they are 3/4th done. Take out the chicken on a clean plate. In the same pan, heat oil and add all the whole spices, onion and fry for few minutes. Add crushed coriander seeds, tomatoes, little salt and let them cook for few minutes. Now add the chicken pieces and cook till they are completely cooked. Sprinkle mint and cook for a min. Serve hot with chapatis.
I know, I am posting too many nonveg dishes. Somehow I am in that mode these days. I prepared this super delicious Spicy chicken vegetable stew yesterday. I am down with too much cold and cough. Ishaan is also having cold, thankfully so far it is not as severe as mine. It really sucks to get sick during a week when the weather gods decide to give us decent temperatures after very heated days till last week. I had all plans of going to local farmer’s market here yesterday, but all I could think of was sleep!.
I am making a genuine attempt to increase our intake of fresh veggies during every meal. Although our staple is one gravy – one side dish – rice or chapati – one sidedish, I make one extra dish with veggies when I make some kind of nonveg. This is new to us because earlier whenever we had nonveg, we skipped on veggies, all of us have a small appetite and there was just that much space in tummy.
Before coming to US, I had rarely tasted any dish which had both chicken and veggies in it. During our initial years here, one of our friends introduced this to me. I was very skeptical before. Slowly, we got used to it. I have become a huge fan of it now. Yesterday, all I craved was a spicy dish with chicken and lots of vegetables. I initially thought of chicken stew that I had posted many years ago. That had much milder flavors  and I wanted something strong. A quick google search landed me on Food Network’s chicken stew recipe. I pretty much mixed both the recipes and added more spices to make this spicy chicken vegetable stew. The curry leaves gave it a very strong aroma and it was a very comforting dish. The ingredient list is a bit long but all are available in most of Indian kitchens.
Ingredients: 1 lb chicken 1 tbl spn ginger garlic paste 1/2 tea spn red chilli powder 1 tbl spn thick yogurt (curds) 1/2 cup onions 1/2 cup carrots 1/2 cup celery(optional) 1/4 cup fresh/frozen peas 1/2 cup potato 1/2 cup tomato 12-15 curry leaves 1/2 tea spn cumin powder 1/2 tea spn coriander powder A pinch turmeric 1 tbl spn fresh/frozen coconut 3 cloves 1″ cinnamon A small piece of nutmeg 1 mace 2-3 red chillies Oil Salt
Method:
Marinate the chicken in ginger-garlic paste, a little salt and yogurt for about 30 mins. Add chilli powder to it. Heat a big pan and add oil. Add the chicken pieces and cook till they are almost done. Take out the chicken on a plate and keep aside. In the same pan, heat little more oil, add half the curry leaves, onion, celery, carrot and fry for few minutes. Scrape out all the bits of chicken which is stuck to the pan. These bits give flavor. Now add potatoes, cumin and coriander powder, turmeric and fry for few minutes. Add tomatoes, peas, little salt, about 1 cup water. Cover and cook till vegetables are almost done.
Grind together coconut, red chillies, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and mace. Add the ground paste to the vegetables and let it come to boil. Adjust salt. Add the chicken and remaining curry leaves. Cook for about 5 mins. Serve hot with chapatis or bread.
I have a strong aversion for any ready made frozen stuff. I am ok to eat them once in a while on vacations, but I try not to buy them when I am at home. So I have been trying to make chicken nuggets at home. We have recently started ordering nuggets for Ishaan at restaurants and he eats them sometimes and just walks away some other times.
The only thing I have ever prepared with ground chicken was kheema, since it does not look like chicken no one wants to touch it (other than me, who is a big fan). So I decided to make something different this time. I wanted to make something that Ishaan would eat, so burger was out of question. He does not care for them so far, I will introduce it slowly. I tried these nuggets, all of us really enjoyed them. The best part was, since I used ground chicken, the spices got mixed with every bit and they turned very flavorful. Just make sure not to over cook them.
Method: Add yogurt, chilli powder, garam masala, ginger, garlic, coriander leaves and salt to chicken and leave it aside in refrigerator for 30mins-1hr. Heat a tava (I used cast iron) and spread some oil. Make small balls of the chicken mixture, slightly press them on the palm of your hand. Then roll them in bread crumbs. Shallow fry them till chicken is completely cooked through. Serve hot on their own or with ketchup or a cold raita.
Few days ago, we had some friends visiting us. One friend suggested I make ragda pattis for them, I wanted to make something else for starters. Most of these friends are chicken lovers, so I thought of making chicken kababs. There is something very interesting about chicken on skewers – my family is not a big fan of skewers, but I love the look of them. Just to make them more interesting, I added some capsicum (green bellpeppers) and pineapple to them.
These were so easy to make – the time consuming thing was to put them on skewers and then grilling them. I did skewering while watching IPL match – Ohh, I am a big Rahul Dravid fan and loved watching him bat!. I would have baked them, but I had enough time left before my friends arrived. So I went ahead with grilling them on my cast iron grill pan. They went very well with green chutney that I prepared for ragda pattis. They were all gone in minutes. I wish I had prepared more!.
Method: Mix together yogurt, ginger garlic paste, cumin powder, coriander powder, chili powder, salt in a bowl. Add about 3/4 th of the marinade paste to chicken pieces and keep aside for 4-5hrs. Add remaining marinade to pineapple and capsicum pieces, mix well. Skewer chicken and vegetables. Heat a grill pan and grill them till chicken is done. Serve hot.
Well, this is not the traditional chicken achari recipe, but my cousin Anirudh’s creation. Few months ago, we were chatting on google chat – he was in Germany and I was here in Kansas. It was one of those catch up sessions where we chat once in a while and catch up on what is going in our lives. That day I asked him what he was eating in his hostel. He mentioned he had prepared a chicken curry that day. He then said he has a recipe for me. He prepares this frequently and it is super hit with his friends. He also said he has become an expert in the kitchen and next time we meet, we will have a cook off! He was so confident that he said he will surely win :).
Anirudh uses actual achaar(pickle) in his recipe. He said he had a lot of pickle in his pantry and didn’t know what to do with it. He started applying it to chicken and grilling it in oven. He usually uses a Tamil pickle (he forgot the name of it). He liked the taste so he kept changing it to get to this recipe. It sounded so interesting to me. Instantly I knew how to finish off some of chili pickle that was sitting in my pantry begging to be finished. Anirudh uses chicken legs (tangdi) for this, since I almost always buy boneless chicken, I use that to make this. I tried my own variations to this recipe and it always comes out perfect.
Ingredients: 4 chicken legs (I used boneless chicken breast) 3-4 springs coriander leaves 1 tea spn chopped ginger 1 tea spn chopped garlic 5-6 mint leaves 1-2 tea spns masala from pickle (I used chili pickle) 1/2 tea spn red chilly powder 1 tbl spn yogurt (optional, not in original recipe) Lemon juice Salt
Method: Make a paste of coriander leaves, ginger, garlic, mint leaves, pickle masala, chilli powder, salt. Make some deep slits on the chicken. Apply the paste and yogurt to chicken and leave it aside for about 30mins. Grill in the oven, when it is almost half done, pull out and apply some lemon juice and put it back in oven. Grill till done. (I grill the chicken on my cast iron grill pan). Serve hot.
Variation : Instead of using pickle, I use fresh (Konkani) pickle ingredients directly. I leave out coriander and mint leaves so that chicken gets all the flavors from pickle masala.
Ingredients: 4 chicken legs (I used boneless chicken breast) 1 tea spn mustard seeds 1/4 tea spn fenugreek seeds A pinch asafoetida 1 tea spn chopped ginger 1 tea spn chopped garlic 2 green chillies 1 tbl spn yogurt (optional, not in original recipe) Lemon juice Salt
Method: Heat oil and add mustard seeds. When they start popping, add fenugreek seeds, asafoetida. Make a paste with green chillies, ginger, garlic. Â Here instead of making the masala, you can just add some ready pickle masala and skip the whole grinding process. Apply the masala, yogurt and salt to chicken and leave it aside for about 30mins. Grill in the oven, when it is almost half done, pull out and apply some lemon juice and put it back in oven. Grill till done. (or grill on a grill pan).
We had a snow storm 2 weeks ago that dumped about 12″ of snow here in Kansas. Just when we thought we could move around again, we got the second one last week. Although the driveways were cleaned, it was too cold to move around. We still have lot of snow on the ground. This kind of weather calls for some hot soup.
I don’t make chicken soups at home because V does not like chicken flavor in his soups. I love these kind of soups which are packed with nutrition with vegetables and chicken. So I went ahead and prepared this. It came out so well that both V and Ishaan enjoyed it. To be very honest, I wanted to make my favorite chicken noodle soup, but instead of adding noodles (which I did not have), I added a mixture of bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese. I marinated the chicken so that it got nice flavors.
Ingredients: 1 cup onion 1 cup celery 1 cup carrots 1/2 lb chicken chopped into 1/2″ pieces 1/2 tea spn tobasco sauce (optional) 1/2 tea spn pepper 1/2 tea spn dried basil 1 tbl spn parmesan cheese 1 tbl spn panco bread crumbs A little butter/olive oil Chicken/Vegetable stock or water Salt
Method:
Add tobasco sauce, pepper and a little salt to chicken and leave it aside for around 30mins.
Heat oil or butter and fry onions for few minutes till they are translucent. Add salt to onions to help them break down easily. Do not brown them. Now add celery, carrots, water or stock and cook till they are soft. I cooked them in pressure cooker.
Add the chopped chicken and let it cook.
Then add cheese and bread crumbs. Mix and let it get mixed.
Now add dried basil, pepper, cook another min. Serve hot.
PS: I used boneless chicken because that is all I had with me. If you are using chicken with bones, you can cook the marinated chicken separately in water/stock. Take out the pieces, then chop chicken in pieces and save them. Use the stock/water to cook vegetables. When vegetables are cooked, add chicken back to soup.
Couple of months ago, V’s maternal uncle and aunt visited us in Kansas. Did I mention I love to have guests at home? Their stay was packed with lots and lots of travel in and around Kansas. In between, we squeezed in some time for food. I baked a cake for them, which aunt requested, and she gave me couple of her signature recipes. This is one of those recipes.
She called this “Marathi chicken”. The specialty of this is the ghee seasoning – she called it “Kaat” – the red ghee seasoning that floats on top. She uses ghee in marinade, for frying onion and for the “kaat“. I used it for only the seasoning.
Ingredients: 1 lb(0.45kg approx) chicken 1/4 cup chopped coriander leaves 1 tea spn chopped ginger 1 tea spn chopped garlic 2 green chillies 2 tbl spns lemon juice 1/2 cup onion 1/2 cup tomatoes 1-2 tea spn ghee 1/2 tea spn chilli powder A pinch turmeric
Method: Make a paste of ginger, garlic, green chillies, coriander leaves and lemon juice. Add this paste to chicken and leave it aside for around 30mins. Dry roast fennel seeds, cloves, cinnamon, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, poppy seeds. Add coconut, chilli powder, turmeric powder, fry for a minute. Grind with chilli powder, turmeric and coconut to a paste. Keep it aside. Heat oil and fry onion, add little salt to onion to break it down faster. Add tomatoes, chicken and fry for few minutes. Add the paste and cook till chicken is done. Heat ghee and add turmeric, chilli powder. Pour over the curry like a seasoning. Serve with chapatis or rice.
It looks like ages ago when I was working for a IT company in Bangalore!. Anyone who has ever worked in IT industry knows how busy and stressful life can get. During those days, my friends and I loved to take long lunch break together. I looked forward to this time as most of my friends were great cooks. We loved talking about food, exchanged recipes. This is one such recipe I got from my friend Sandhya. She even wrote it down on a piece of paper for me. I have prepared this so many times since then.
Fried onions give a sweetish taste to this chicken. The dish gets done so fast, only time consuming part being marinating the chicken. I usually cut and fry onions when chicken is marinating. I use tender breast pieces, so that only 10-15 mins marination is enough. I love that this dish does not have too many ingredients and tastes amazing.
Ingredients: 1 lb (0.45 kg approx) chicken cut into strips 2 cups chopped onion A pinch turmeric 5 green chillies 7-8 strands (along with thick stems) coriander leaves 2 tea spn chopped ginger 2 tea spn chopped garlic 1 tbl spn soy sauce Oil/ghee Salt
Method: Make a paste on green chillies, garlic, ginger, coriander leaves. Apply to chicken and leave aside. If you are using tender chicken breasts, 10-15mins marination in enough. Otherwise leave it aside for atleast 30mins. Heat ghee or oil and fry onions till they are brownish. To help the onions cook down faster, add a little salt. Add the chicken, turmeric, salt and let it cook. When chicken is half done, add soy sauce, mix well. Let the chicken cook completely. Serve hot as a side dish with chapatis or as a starter. Goes well with curd rice too.
Serves : 3-4 Preparation time : 15mins (plus marination time)
