Well I decided to live really wild this week and spontaneously pull a country for a quiet Friday evening at home doing some cooking. The lucky draw was Comoros, a country in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa.
I could not immediately locate a national dish for this country, so I started doing some Internet research to come up with a recipe.
Comoros must be a pretty nice island locale because over the years it was invaded by various groups from Africa, Indonesia, Madagascar and the Persian Gulf region. France and Portugal also paid their own friendly visits.
Of course all of these people were kind enough to bring ingredients from their native countries and introduced them to the Comorosians. This inspired an eclectic cuisine that revolves heavily around rice and meat cooked with various spices, like cloves and saffron, vanilla and cardamon.
I found a decent recipe for a Comorosian chicken curry. I'd post the link, but the web site kept freezing my computer every time I visited it. Besides, I altered the recipe anyway to use up some of the building arsenal of ingredients in my refrigerator.
Without further ado, my version of a Comorosian chicken curry.
Ingredients:
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts (More if you are cooking for more people, obviously. I still have a ton of food frozen from last week so I need to start scaling back my portion sizes.)
Canola oil
1 yellow onion, sliced thin
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
3 serrano peppers, chopped
2 inch piece of fresh ginger, grated
5 tomatoes peeled, diced (You can use fresh, or canned tomatoes - whole or already diced. I used whole, canned plum tomatoes and diced them.)
6 whole cloves
About 2 tbsps. ground cardamon
About 1 cup of vanilla greek yogurt (let sit to room temperature)
1 tbsp. flour
About 1 tbsp. ground cumin
A pinch of saffron
Arborio rice
What I did:
Start by heating about 2 tbsps. of canola oil in a frying pan. Clean the chicken and when the pan is hot throw it in, searing the two pieces. Let the chicken sit for a few minutes on each side so you get a nice brown barrier that will lock in the juices. When done searing, pop the chicken in the over (pre-heated to 350 degrees) to let it finish cooking for (about 25 minutes).
Add the onions, garlic, peppers and ginger to the pan and let it all cook until the onions are soft. Then add the cloves and cardamon and let cook for a few minutes.
When the chicken is done, add it back to the curry and add the tomatoes. Reduce to low heat.
Meanwhile, mix the yogurt with the cumin, saffron and flour. Take a few tbsps. of the curry sauce and add it to the yogurt slowly, mixing briskly. This is supposed to gradually heat the yogurt so it does not curdle. Remove the chicken from the pan, and stir in thre yogurt/curry mix and stir quickly to prevent curdling. Cover and let simmer for one hour.
Meanwhile, cook the rice so it will be ready to serve the chicken over.
I really enjoyed this dish. The seared chicken was tender and juicy and the curry sauce is a nice balance of the full flavors of the spices and the kick of the serrano peppers. The ginger also helps cool the palate from the peppers.
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