How to Cook Nerd Curry

Okay, let's do something different and share around a great curry Recipe.

Someone recently emailed, and asked what nerds like Big Passy eat to create a BMI battle with themselves. So here is just one of many possible answers.

Chicken Curry Tamil Nadu

This is an Indian curry from the southern "Tamil Nadu" state of India. It is neither sweet nor sour, and has a unique rich creamy flavour. Big Passy developed this recipe by fusing together a few different recipes from some Indian cook books.

This chicken curry is his son's favorite, and A.J. says it tastes as good as Indian restaurant food. (He even eats up all of the vegetables that are in it!)

So let's get into how it is made. I will mention some brand names here, which might not exist outside of Australia, but equivalents should easily be found.

What we need: The Ingredients

Around 400g of diced and crushed tomatoes. You can buy a tin of these, but they will usually be very salty, and make the curry very acidic and even sour. This will need to be balanced out by adding some soft brown sugar to taste near the end of cooking. It is much better to buy 6 or 7 medium sized tomatoes and make our own diced tomatoes like this. Prick all of the tomatoes about 8 times with the tip of a sharp pointy knife, and then drop them into a bowl of boiled water. After about 5 minutes, we should be able to peel off and discard the skins, and cut out the cores. (Use a fork to spear and hold them, and a knife to peel off the skin). Slice up these peeled tomatoes in a casserole dish, and then use a potato masher to completely mush them up.

Three or Four large chicken breasts need to be cut up into bite size chunks. Put these raw chunks into a shallow sealable contained, add 2 heaped table spoons of Maharaji brand Tandoori curry paste, and stir the chicken chunks so they are all coated in it. Leave these in the sealed container for at least 2 hours in the fridge to marinate.

Combine the following spices in a mortar and pestel grinder and crush them all together with each other:

1 heaped teaspoon of fennel seeds
2 teaspoons of crushed ground black peppercorns
1 heaped teaspoon of dried red chilli flakes
One quarter heaped teaspoon of ground cardamom seeds
1 flat teaspoon of ground Nutmeg

Additional ingredients that are required:
1 heaped tablespoon of crushed Ginger (can use supermarket jar variety)
1 large brown onion sliced up into thin wedges.
1 Red Capsicum bell pepper sliced into bitesize pieces
1 handful of fresh green beans sliced up
5 leaves of Chard, Silver Beat, Spinach, or Boc Choy (to fill a small soup bowl)
1 x 400ml can of Trident brand Coconut Cream
(not the light type, but full strength).
1 x 140g tub of tomato paste, but only use about 80g of it.
2 x Star Anise to add into the curry while it is being simmered

Some Rice cooked separately:
2 cups of water and 1 cup of Basmati or Jasmin rice that needs to be cooked by absorption method.

How we cook the Curry:

We need to use a cast iron pot, or a Wok, or Electric Frypan that we can cover with a lid while the curry is simmered. I like to use a Sunbeam brand Electric Frypan.

Cook the chicken in some oil on high heat in 2 batches, and set aside on a plate.

Now cook the onion until clear, then add in the beans, red pepper, and Ginger and only cook for 1 or 2 minutes. Now add the cooked chicken, the ground spice mix, and the crushed up tomatoes, the tomato paste, and stir together.

Next add the coconut cream, the 2 star anise, stir together, and then simmer for 20 minutes with the lid on.

After this, add the Chard or equivalent green leaves, stir them in until they shrivel up. Now simmer for 20 minutes with the lid off, until the chicken is tender and the sauce has thickened.



Serve on the boiled rice, and bon apetit.

(So easy that even nerds can make it).


Now if you really want to learn to cook all sorts of interesting things, then check out these great web sites:

"The Pioneer Woman" website at: http://thepioneerwoman.com/

as well as "Kim's Concoctions" at: http://kims-concoctions.blogspot.com/


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Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi