Chicken Malvani

Here’s the recipe of Chicken Malvani, a coastal Maharashtrian dish, coconut based gravy with touch of tangy kokum.

RECIPE:

Ingredients : For One kg of chicken –

Chicken with bones.

Three medium sized onion.

Two medium sized tomato.

Two green chilli.

Half tsp of Turmeric powder.

Curry leaves.

One lime juice.

2 inch ginger

10-12 cloves of garlic.

Coconut oil or any other Cooking oil.

Salt to taste.

One medium sized freshly grated coconut.

Coriander leaves.

Six kokum soaked in water.  If kokum is not available, 10-15 gms of tamarind will also do.

Whole Garam Masalas – 4 cloves, 2 inch cinnamon stick, 10 black pepper, pinch of fenugreek seed, one tbs of fenil seed, 4 small cardamom, 5 dry red chillies, 2 tbs of coriander seeds, 1 tbs of cumin seeds and 2 dry mace.

Method :

Clean the chicken well with water.

Marinate the chicken with lime juice, pinch of turmeric powder and little salt.  Leave this simple margination for an hour either in fridge of just in room temperature.

Take a dry pan.  Heat the pan and dry roast all the whole garam masalas for 3 to 5 minutes (don’t allow it to burn), keep stirring, add chopped green chillies, add chopped ginger and garlic, add grated coconut to the pan and roast the whole mixture for another 7 to 10 minutes or until the coconut turns light brown.

Grind the above pan mixture by adding little water, to the consistency of a paste.

Chop Onion and Tomato small pieces.

Take a deep cooking pan (kadai), add oil and heat up, add one tbs of cumin seeds and curry leaves to infuse the aroma of these two in the oil.

Add onion to the cooking pan and fry it until golden brown. Add turmeric powder.

Add tomato, fry until tomato is well cooked and you see floating oil in the pan, sticking to sides. This indicates that tomato is cooked well.

Add the grinded masala paste to the cooking pan.  Keep stirring the masala’s until the raw masala flavour is gone.  Don’t allow the masala to stick to the pan, so keep stirring. This paste need to be roasted to perfection, as the whole delicacy of this dish depends on how well you roast this masala in the pan.  You can see oil floating on sides of the pan indicating that this masala paste is roasted perfectly.

Add marinated chicken to the pan and stir well so that the chicken is coated with masalas.  Sim the heat and cover the pan with lid.  Leave it for 10-12 minutes with lid covered in Sim heat.

Stir well again. Add salt to taste.  Remember little salt was also added to marinate the chicken.

When the chicken is almost cooked add kokum and soaked water to the pan.  Again stir well to infuse the kokum flavour in the dish.

Add little water to make the gravy thick and let the chicken cook to finish by covering the pan with the lid, and Sim heat.  Do not add too much water to avoid watery gravy.

In 5 to 8 minutes this dish is ready.

Garnish with Coriander leaves and curry leaves.

Serve hot.

This dish goes well with Chapatti or Bhakri or even Konkani Wade.

Enjoy Eating.