The Chicken Kosha is a classic and has been my base of Chicken recipes for the past few posts. But during all this time, I also managed to prepare quite a few varied dishes. My latest venture in the kitchen was another childhood Sunday classic – Murgir Jhol. Sunday mornings we used to study and then go out and play for the next couple of hours and by the time we reached back home, the aroma of the chicken curries from the para used to make us hungrier than we actually were!
I had read somewhere that often we add so many secondary items to the main ingredient at times that the taste of the core ingredient gets diluted. This dish brings the simplicity of Bengali cuisine to the fore and ensures that the classic dish, still remains a classic. The jhol(stew) is spicy and cooking over slow fire ensures that all the ingredients are infused in the right proportions.It goes best with steamed basmati rice.
Serves: 4
Preparation Time: 20 mins
Cooking Time: 1hr.
Ingredients:
- Chicken Pieces: 1 kg. On the bone.
- Onion Paste: From 250 gms onion.
- Ginger Paste: From 15 gms ginger.
- Garlic Paste: From 10-12 cloves of garlic.
- One whole garlic: I had mentioned in some of my earlier posts that sometimes my aunty used to put in a whole garlic in the chicken curry. Whereas the garlic did not make a difference of taste in the jhol, but we used to squeeze the juice of the almost melt garlic while enjoying the curry later with the rice.
- Green Chilies:8-10.Slit
- Potato:2 large potatoes. Sliced into 2 halves each.
- Mustard Oil: 5 tbsp
- Sugar:1.5 tbsp
- Salt: To taste
- Powdered Spices
- Turmeric Powder:2 tsp
- Coriander Powder: 2 tsp
Procedure:
- Heat 5 tbsp of mustard oil in a kadai.
- Once the oil gets hot, add the Onion Paste.
- Stir fry the onion paste over medium heat for 8-10 mins until the onion paste turns brown
- Then add the ginger and garlic pastes.
- Stir fry the mixture for another 4-5 mins.
- Then add the potato slices and green chilies. Roast for sometime.
- Then add the powdered spices.
- Over low heat, stir the mixture for 4-5 mins. This ensures that the ingredients blend thoroughly with each other with the spices.
- Then add the chicken pieces and increase the heat to medium high.Sprinkle sugar and salt over the mixture.
- Roast the chicken along for another 18-20 mins.
- Then add half a cup of water to the mixture and mix the ingredients. Check the level of salt and adjust if required.
- Warm 2.5-3 cups of water in a pressure cooker.
- When the water in the cooker gets warm, transfer all the ingredients into the pressure cooker.
- Cook for 25 mins under low-medium heat until the chicken is tender.
Serve hot with steamed basmati rice.
