Monday, November 07, 2011

Chicken Ularthiyadhu / Kerala Chicken Fry


This is yet another lip smacking chicken fry that I usually make if I want to impress !Got it via a Malayalam cookery show. The best part of the dish for me is to eat the last part of the dish left after all the big pieces of chicken is gone! You will understand what I am talking about when you finish cooking.

Ingredients
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Chicken - 1 whole chicken (cut into small pieces)
Onion - 2 medium sized( sliced length wise)
Green chillies - 4-5 
Ginger - 1 inch piece
Garlic - 4-5 cloves
Whole black peppercorns - 2tbsp
Red chilli powder - 2tsp
Daniya powder - 2tsp
Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp
Coconut - 1/2 cup (shredded) (the more the merrier)
Curry leaves - quite a few
Whole garam masala - 1 piece cinnamon, 2 cardamom, 2 cloves , 1tsp perunjeerakam
Oil - 4 tbsp
Salt - as needed


Note : I made this one extra spicy (as usual) to go with a bland dal :)
And even 2-3 tsp of aacchi red chilli powder goes a long way.

Method
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Clean and marinate the chicken pieces with red chilli, daniya, turmeric  and salt for about 20-30 minutes.
Add ginger, garlic , green chilli, pepper corns, whole garam masalas and few curry leaves in a chopped/mixie and give it a quick pulse.The point is not to make it a paste.Give it just a quick grind, so we can see few pieces of ginger/garlic/pepper etc. The main recipe calls for us to add coconut and onion slices to ginger garlic pepper  when grinding.I didn't do it as 1) my coconut were very thinly shredded and 2) I am always afraid of grinding raw onion even if it  is for a quick pulse. 

Now, add the ginger garlic pepper mix, coconut, onion into a bowl and mix is very well with your clean hands.Make sure you break few of the onion slices to bring out the juice.Now add this mixture into marinated chicken and mix well.


Add oil into a heavy bottomed pan placed in medium high heat.Add this chicken mixture and few curry leaves into the pan and cover n cook for about 5-6 minutes.Once you see chicken is releasing water, remove the lid and let is cook on medium high heat.Try to break the chicken pieces, this makes this dish extra special.This dish is very dry, so keep cooking until all the water is evaporated from the dish.I usually cook it on high heat for last few minutes.It should look like the same in the picture.

Do not forget to eat the last part :)

We had this with roti  and dal.