Kozhy Korambu and Carrot Curry

Recipe for Sunday, August 29, 2010: Bal Arneson's South Indian Style Chicken (with Dry Carrot Curry on the side)

Preliminarily, I made these 2 dishes because of the extra kick that I thought having the carrot would give the overall meal. I only have a very few cooking tricks up my sleeve, and I must admit my husband is responsible for a lot of them. Not only because he's a good cook, but he's a good eater. He's SUPER picky, but he's also a great critic. For example, in Indian cooking, we often serve side dishes, or subzis, with main dishes. He told me once that you can never have a gravy side dish with a gravy main dish. You have to do one dry and one gravy. This makes a lot of sense because the dry vegetable will add a nice crunch to the gravy-soaked rice and meat that comprise the main dish. This is why I made the dry carrot to accompany the chicken.

I love the way this chicken turned out. I chose this recipe because I noticed that sambar powder was one of the ingredients that comprised the spice mix. My basic North Indian/Pakistani chicken curry in the past has been just chicken, red chili powder, turmeric, coriander powder, cumin, with garlic/onion/ginger, salt, tomato, and a little garam masala and cilantro leaves to garish at the end. The same formula is interchangeable with countless meats/vegetables/lentils. Honestly, it's boring. I'm always looking out for dishes that utilize different kind of spices. Lately, I've tried to choose dishes with at least 1 spice deviation from the above formula; it has to have 1 different spice that I haven't used or I've only used like once or twice. I've stocked my spice cabinet with things like kalonji (onion seeds I think), mace, fennel seed, fenugreek seed, anise seed, ajwain, etc., in the hopes of one day using it in some exotic recipe. Unfortunately, the utility of a lot of these spices has been limited by my amateurism--with the exception of fennel and fenugreek. I do, however, dream of the day when I'll casually adopt them in my weekday dinner repertoire without too much excitement.

Back to the recipe. The only changes I made were adding a chopped up green chili at the end, using fewer curry leaves (not by choice), and substituting low sodium chicken broth for the water at the end. Curry leaves are extremely common in South India, which happens to be where I'm from, and unfortunately, I realized I only had about seven leaves left after I already started cooking. "No matter" you might say? Nooooo....curry leaves are a cornerstone of the South Indian culinary tradition. They bring a sharp spicy (but not hot) kick to often creamy curries. I was immediately annoyed that I didn't have the 1/4 cup that the recipe called for. In any event, the last change I made was that I slow cooked the chicken. It seems from the video that Bal only cooks the chicken for like 12 minutes. I had it slow cooking for almost an hour--mostly to keep it warm, tenderize the chicken, and let the flavors mix well. I wonder if that dumbed the flavor of the sambar powder down a little...but at the end of the cooking process, the strongest flavor that seemed to emerge was the coconut milk. I love coconut milk, but I'm not sure I like it to be the dominant flavor. That was really the only drawback, and it might have been my own fault for letting it cook for that long. Optimally, I would have liked the sambar flavor to have been dominant, because this dish is pretty much the South Indian dish "Kozhy Korambu," ( கோழி கோரம்பு) or chicken sambar. On the other hand, I was pretty happy with the subtlety of the flavor, because I'm kind of risk-averse when it comes to new dishes, and if I had gone overboard with the spicing, then I would not have had good things to say here, and it would have made for a very bad first post.

A new trick I learned from my husband initially, but then from Bal, is adding kadugu (mustard seeds) AFTER starting the frying of the garlic/ginger/onions. Growing up, my mom always used to fry mustard seeds first before adding any other ingredients to the pan. What this does is make the mustard seeds pop and I always thought that the opened mustard seeds was what spread the flavor through the dish. In this recipe, however, notice how Bal adds the seeds after starting the fry of onions/garlic/ginger. At the end of the segment, when taking her first taste, she says something to the effect of "the mustard seeds are popping open in my mouth." Well shoot! As much as I love my mom's method, having the seeds pop in my mouth instead of the pan makes the flavor in the seeds come out in my mouth, which makes it stronger somehow. I also just like the extra little crunch it gives.



Dry Carrot Curry

This turned out pretty awesome too. It went well with Kozhy Korambu because of the garlic I added. Again, my mom's traditional South Indian recipe forbids garlic, because it's not historically used in our cooking--mostly because my ancestors were strict vegetarians (I don't even think that's the right word for what they were, since there are many vegetarian things even that they don't eat, but they're avid dairy consumers so it's not vegan either)...anyway, garlic was traditionally "frowned upon" because it's a root vegetable, so you kill the entire plant when picking it from the ground. As a result, some strict, strict Hindus wouldn't even use it in their cooking, because of the harm to the plant. The flavor of garlic/onion can also be seen as somewhat incompatible with the cooking, if you're a purist. My grandmother actually revolutionized our home food by introducing onion into the dinner mix. Garlic, she still finds scandalous, but sometimes she sneaks it into rasams for my cousin Govind and I, because it's a bit of a thrill to introduce rebellion into her simple life. In that sense, traditional iyengar sambar (what my ancestors made) DEFINITELY is not made with chicken. When I first learned that such a thing existed, I actually cringed, because it felt a little sacreligious (not that I'm even that religious), but anyway. As I got used to the idea, it seemed more and more yummy (as long as it didn't include the dhal).

Back to the carrot!

The Dry Carrot Curry recipe is as follows:
Ingredients
1. About 2 double handfuls of carrots chopped up
2. 1/4 tsp of turmeric
3. 1/3 tsp of red chili powder
4. 2 tsp of chopped garlic (or less if you want less garlic flavor. If you don' t like garlic, omit it altogether)
5. 1 tsp of black mustard seeds
6. salt to taste
7. oil for frying
Recipe
Add a couple tablespoons of oil to the pan. Put in the carrots and garlic. Fry for 3 minutes. Add the mustard seeds, turmeric, red chili powder, and salt. Keep tossing and frying. When it starts getting dry but not cooked, sprinkle water. Repeat the sprinkling every time it gets dry so the carrot cooks through and doesn't burn. Do not pour water, because it will make the carrots soggy. Total cooking time is about 20-25 minutes.

This is a simple but satisfying addition to the Kozhy Korambu recipe. You can also do potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips, turnips or other root veg that will give you a nice crunch when paired with the gravy of the sambar.

Happy recipe-ing!