Chicken vindaloo recipe

1. First, prepare spice paste for chicken marinade.

(i) Using a pestle and mortar, pound the cumin seeds, cardamon pods, cloves, cinnamon stick and black peppercorns. At the end, the only bits left are cardamon pod's shells which are rather hard to be thoroughly smashed even after painstaking bashings. Manually remove these cardamon pod shells.

(ii) Now add in the remaining ingredients (bird's eye chillies, ginger and garlic cloves) into the spice powder and pound together to form a fine paste. Take out the paste mixture to a bowl and add in 3 tbsp of freshly squeezed lemon juice and 2 tbsp of white wine vinegar. Stir well.

Note : Alternative of method (ii), you can use food processor or blender to make the paste mixture. Blend the spice powder (already pounded using pestle and mortar as in (i)) with the other paste ingredients (bird's eye chillies, ginger and garlic cloves) in a food processor with lemon juice and white wine vinegar until you obtain a fine paste. It's wise to automate this process instead of using pestle and mortar as I did.

2. Add the chicken to the bowl containing paste misture and toss well to coat the chicken pieces. Cover the bowl with cling film and let it stands in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, or preferably overnight to ensure the chicken cubes absorb well all the spice marinade.

3. When you are ready to cook, heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet and saute the garlic for roughly one minute. Add the chopped onions and the de-seeded red chilli pepper, stir well and wait until the onions are throroughly browned. Add the rest of the dried ground spices : 2 tsp turmeric powder, 3 tsp chilli powder, 1 tbsp tomato puree, 3 chopped bird's eye chillies, 1 tsp salt (or to taste) and some freshly ground black peppers. All heaped spoons except the turmeric powder, which should be just cover a flat teaspoon. Stir well for roughly one minute before adding the chopped tomatoes and 2 stalks of smashed lemongrass. Stir fry the mixture for about 5 minutes gently.

5. Add in the marinated chicken and continue to stir fry until the chicken is thoroughly coated in the mixture and cooked. It takes around 10 minutes.

6. Now pour in 120ml of water and bring to a boil, then reduce to low heat, cover with lid and simmer for 25 minutes until the sauce thickened. Check on and off if additional water is required to prevent scorching. 5 minutes before heat off, check the taste of the curry and add additional salt if necessary. Sprinkle a generous topping of coriander leaves for garnishing and serve hot with rice.

Source :
http://gladyskockhomeculinary.blogspot.com/2009/10/chicken-vindaloo-recipe.html