Tamil & the South · Main
Kozhi Chettinad
- Advanced
- 55 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, aromatics blooming from the first bite, on a drift of smoke.
Ingredients
- 1 kg chicken on the bone, cut into small pieces
- 8 dried gundu chillies
- 20 g coriander seeds
- 10 g fennel seeds (sombu)
- 8 g black peppercorns
- 5 g cumin seeds
- 2 g kalpasi (stone flower)
- 1 star anise, 3 cm cassia, 4 cloves, 3 green cardamom
- 60 g fresh grated coconut
- 200 g small onions (chinna vengayam), sliced
- 25 g ginger and 25 g garlic, pounded to a paste
- 2 tomatoes, chopped
- 60 ml gingelly oil
- 3 sprigs curry leaves
- 1 tsp turmeric
- Salt
Equipment
Mortar & pestle · Grater / zester
The skills inside
Pounding a curry pasteSearing: the hard crustRoasting in a hot ovenFrying the paste until the oil splits
The words inside
Fennel, Anise & the Licorice Line
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Dry roast on low heat: coriander seeds until they crack and darken a shade, then fennel, pepper, cumin, cassia, cloves, cardamom and star anise for a minute until fragrant. Kill the heat and drop the kalpasi into the residual warmth for 10 seconds only, until it smells of woodsmoke.
- Roast the coconut separately, stirring without pause, until it is the colour of dark toast and smells nutty. Grind everything with a splash of water to a fine paste.
- Heat the gingelly oil and brown the small onions until collapsed and sweet, add the ginger garlic until the raw edge lifts, then the tomatoes until they break to a jam that pulls away from the pan.
- Fry the ground masala in that oil for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring, until the paste darkens and a rim of red oil pulls away at the sides of the pan. 8 min
- Add the chicken and turmeric, coat and sear 5 minutes until every piece is lacquered and no pink shows, then 100 ml water, lid on, 20 minutes until the meat pulls from the bone. 5 min
- Tear in the curry leaves and simmer uncovered until the gravy clings to the chicken instead of pooling under it.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Pounding a curry paste 23 recipes
- Smeared thin across a pale surface it reads as one substance, edge to edge: no pale gritty specks standing proud of the smear, no shard that drags a line through it as the smear is pulled. Flecks mean something hard went in after something wet and skated instead of shattering.
- Rubbed between finger and thumb it feels like wet clay, dense and smooth, and takes the print of the thumb. Anything that rolls into a hard grain or grits like sand has not been broken down, and the order of work was wrong.
- The fibrous aromatics have surrendered: pinch a little and pull, and nothing draws out as a thread or a hair. Listen to the last minutes of work as well, which should be a dull wet slap in the mortar; a dry knock or rattle still present means hard pieces are being chased around rather than crushed.
- One even colour throughout when it is turned under the light, deep and saturated, with no marbling and no streak in which a single component can still be read. A dull grey cast over the surface says it was worked long past its point.
- Heaped up and left alone it stands in a soft peak and holds the mark of the pestle for a full minute: no clear or coloured liquid creeps out at the base, no oily film separates on top. It should also come to the pass cool, no warmer than about 25 C (77 F); a mortar warm to the back of the hand means friction has driven off the top aroma and the paste will smell flat.
Where it goes wrong Everything went into the mortar together, or the wet ingredients arrived before the hard, dry ones had been reduced to dust, so the moisture cushioned every blow and the hard pieces slid rather than broke. What comes to the pass is a wet mince rather than a paste: hard flecks and fibrous threads through a loose slurry, liquid weeping out of the heap within a minute, colour marbled instead of single, and on the plate it reads as separate raw items sitting next to each other rather than one flavour.
Roasting in a hot oven 56 recipes
- The oven was fully up to heat before anything went in, given time beyond the indicator light rather than judged by it.
- Every piece has air around it. Nothing touches its neighbour and nothing is packed to the edge of the tray, because crowded food steams itself in its own moisture and never browns.
- Colour is even across the whole tray, the tray having been turned at least once: no pale row at the back and no dark row at the front.
- It came out BEFORE the target temperature, not at it. Carryover keeps driving the inside up by several degrees after it leaves the oven, and that rise is part of the cooking rather than an error in it.
- The temperature was read at the coldest part rather than the easiest one to reach, and read again after the rest.
Where it goes wrong The tray was crowded, or the oven was not truly up to heat. The food releases steam faster than a cool box can carry it away, so it sits pale and slack, and the extra minutes spent chasing colour take the inside well past where it should have stopped.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chardonnay (village Burgundy)
- Also Right
- Chianti or Barbera
- From the Taps
- Bière de garde
- Zero-Proof
- Verbena iced tea
Chicken is wine’s most agreeable partner. Match the SAUCE, not the bird: cream to oak, tomato to Sangiovese’s acid, herbs to Loire whites.
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