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.
Serves : 4-5
Preparation time : 45mins
I was looking for this recipe from long. I will try and let you know the result. Thank you shilpa.
tried this one. came out really good.i too like the stew to be a little spicy.next time dont add the curds. instead, you can add coconut juice at the end.also turns out yummy.
really liked the addition of so many veggies in this yummy stew, yoghurt certainly adds a nice tang for this delicious comfort-in-a-bowl,thanks for sharing 🙂
Really like this stew. I also add veggies to my chicken soup. In Bengal a chicken curry is always made along with large potatoes, but it is great to have so many veggies in this one.
My teenage daughter Katy and I made this for dinner, and we wanted to say thank you! It turned out very nice. We served it with wheat parathas, mango chutney, and kachumber. It easily serves 6. Thank you for your interesting blog. I have enjoyed following it for some time, although this is the first time I’ve cooked one of your recipes.
This is really a time saver dish when guests are at home in the weekend. We can serve this dish with chapati or rice. No need to cook separate gravies for vegetables and chicken. Nice recipe! 🙂
This looks sooooo yummy! Definitely a great comfort food! Thank you for sharing this with great instructions!
can you tell me which mixer do you use in US to get this kind of texture.
I use Sumeet mixer that I got from India. I haven’t found a good blender that would grind coconut well – heard a lot about Vitamix, but never tried it myself