Oven-Baked Curry Chicken

Posted by St. Fallen on October 13, 2011 · 11 Comments 

So this space has been closed for a while, like Samara being shut in the well as she tries to crawl up all creepy-like in the second Ring movie. *shudder*

And in the meanwhile I have been up to… well, not so much. But it’s been a pretty good not-so-much, I’m quite satisfied with being lazy. I think my definition of being productive is possibly biased due to my leaning towards being a bum. I’ve focused mostly on my music, and in the past two months getting back into cooking!

Malli has been at Hilton for like the past year now, working at the main kitchen and even Il Ponte so I’ve learnt quite a bit from him. Mostly from watching him in awe, and helping with little things. But while he’s at work it’s my turn to cook and so it’s usually a bit of a rocky process since I don’t possess such skills – he has an innate sense of taste and smell –  I’ve smoked too many cigarettes to smell anything.

Lately though I’ve been using coriander and cumin a lot, and tried my hand at fish for the first time and the results were not too bad! No bouts with food poisoning, not even that strange fishy smell (wash hands with VIM). But yeah, I’ll just describe the chicken for now.

So this basically took place on a warm (ridiculously warm!) sunny day, Mum had marinaded the chicken and was too exhausted to cook lunch and so I took it upon myself. The marinade was with curd, curry powder (basically all-spice), chili and some soy sauce. Have to give major props to her because that marinade pretty much made this dish.

All I added to that was some toasted and ground cumin – crushed in the mortar and pestle all by myself – some ginger-garlic paste, and some black pepper too. Let it marinade for about an hour overall. Meanwhile I took out the veggies, we had some cauliflower, like half a potato just lying around, and some carrot. So I went ahead and chopped some onion, washed out the cauliflower, broke it up, and sliced the potato into thin slivers that would cook easily. Afterwards I put them all into the leftover marinade, which was now quite pungent with the cumin and all-spice (sadly we didn’t have any coriander that day).

Checked with malli who said the oven ought to be at 240 degrees celcius, so that was pre-heating while I was prepping. I decided to cut the carrot by length and not too thin cause I like them fresh and crunchy, so the cooking time varied quite a bit between the veggies (not advisable). I popped in the chicken first after buttering the oven-plate thing (Highland Butter futeweh!), and stabbing it repetitively with a fork (like a fucking maniac), set the timer to about 20 minutes. I also let the carrots and the potato cook since I hadn’t boiled them, even the cauliflower and onions, all marinaded and buttered.

About 10 minutes in I got malli to come check on the chicken, the blood had started to ooze out so we flipped them all over and checked out the veggies. They seemed about fine but we added some butter so they wouldn’t dehydrate. The onions were a bit of a lost cause, but the cauliflower, carrots, and potato were doing fine. Left everything in for another 10 minutes and it was done!

And now I’ll try to review it without bias. Firstly, I was amazed that the cauliflower and carrots weren’t dehydrated or overcooked. The carrot was actually still quite crunchy and as you bit into it even juicy! The cauliflower had this awesome crunch and just tasted so fresh. I was glad I went with uber-thin slivers of potato because it really took on the flavors of the marinade and turned out awesome!

The chicken was cooked perfect, I owe this to malli cause I’m always hit-or-miss when it comes to getting those tricky bloody bits near the bone cooked just right. It was moist, and there was still that hint of cumin and the all-spice. Possibly my proudest moment so far, in the kitchen! Also, no illegal produce was involved. We had this with some brown rice and mum’s kehel muwa mallum.

Filed under Abyssus Abyssum Invocat, Ganja Kitchen · Tagged with Black pepper, Carrot, Cauliflower, Chicken, Cumin, Food, food/travel, Oven