Chicken Vindaloo
Those of you who know me well will be aware that I’m rather keen on popping out the Wetherspoons curry club of a Thursday evening, given sufficient liquidity to do so. I’m very much a fan of the Wetherspoons business model, it’s an excellent place to pop in with a wi-fi enabled smartphone and take advantage of an excellent range of competitively priced drinks, amazingly fair priced food and generally good customer service. Should you be one of the few yet to try them, do pop along, though avoiding the party crowd on friday and saturday nights is probably advisable.
I visit myself ( mainly on Thursday ) to take advantage of the wonderful range of curries, offered for a pittance. I’m a particular fan, as a chilli addict, of the chicken vindaloo; the spiciest offering on the menu. As something I’d like to enjoy somewhat more regularly, I’ve been intermittently attempting to reverse engineer the recipe.
Hence my post tonight. I’ve finally managed a reasonable approximation of of the dish where I’m actually happy about the flavour, so I’m presenting it for others who may be interested to tinker with and refine. In no way is this a perfect copy, but it should prove a suitable candidate for refinement.
Initially, we need an onion puree as the core of the dish. This can be prepared thus :
5 onions
a little vegetable oil ( you should use ghee, but it’s a pain to make )
a dash of white wine vinegar
1: Peel and roughly chop the onions.
2: Add a little oil to a pan and heat. Add the onions and cook them slowly until brown. The onions will at least quarter in volume over this time. The browner the better.
3: Remove the onions when caramelised, to a bowl or blender. Add a little oil and the white wine vinegar ( substituting lemon juice should work, if needed ) and blend. You should now have a wonderful beige puree.
Next, we need a vindaloo sauce base. This paste shall suffice :
2 chilli peppers, 1 green, 1 red
2 or 3 cloves of garlic.
2 teaspoons turmeric
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon chilli powder
2 teaspoons garam masala
2 teaspoons dried coriander
2 teaspoons mustard seeds
a few drops chilli extract sauce
Freshly ground pepper
Salt to taste
Water as required
1: Roughly chop the chillis and the garlic into a container for blending. Then add the spices and chilli extract.
2: Blend. The thicker the paste is, the better, but you may need to add water to make it liquid enough. The ideal paste should be the consistency of cement.
Penultimately, we need to prepare the rice :
1 part basmati rice
2.5 parts water
1 or 2 teaspoons of turmeric
a dash of salt
boiling water to rinse the rice
1: Add the rice, water, turmeric and salt to pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for around 10 minutes. The rice is cooked when you can bite through a grain with no resistance.
2: The now yellow rice ( that’s what the turmeric was for ) should be turned out into a collender and rinsed with boiling water. Leave to drip dry.
Finally, the curry itself :
1 tin chopped tomatoes
around 3 chicken breasts
onion puree ( see above )
vindaloo paste ( see above )
2 chilli’s, 1 red, 1 green
a touch of vegetable oil
A little water
More chilli extract, if required.
1: Roughly chop the chillis and dice the chicken breast into bite sized lumps
2: Line the bottom of a pan with oil. Once the oil is hot, add the vindaloo paste and mix the two for a couple of minutes.
3: Add the diced chicken and cook in the sauce for about five minutes. You’re looking for the chicken meat to go nice and white. This should infuse some of the spice into the meat without having to marinade it.
4: Add the chopped tomatoes, chopped chillis and onion puree. Simmer for at least 30 minutes. Add water to thin the consistency a little ( the water should reduce off, during the cooking process ).
5: Add a little extra chilli extract if you find the dish a little limp.
There you go. Add mango chutney, poppadoms and naan bread when serving and this is a reasonably acceptable clone. All feedback to move this closer to the original is of course, very welcome.
Update: 19/8/2010
I’ve altered my sauce base to the following, finding a better flavour, the previous on seemed a little too bitter:
4-5 chilli peppers, mixed colours
2 cloves of garlic.
1 teaspoons turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder ( optional )
3 teaspoons garam masala
1 teaspoons mustard seeds
The usual Hungarian hot wax Tesco sells seems to be acceptable in the above, though using 10g of Dorset Naga coupled with about 20g of Scotch Bonnets seems to give a very good heat, though the flavour is a little fruity because of the bonnets.
I’ve drastically altered the recipe for the rice, getting something much closer to a takeaway rather than a pub curry using it. I should stress, the ‘part’ measurement is one of my large drinking mugs! Not very scientific, I admit.
1 basmati rice
2.5 parts chicken stock
1 or 2 teaspoons of turmeric
8 cloves
4 cardamom pods
1 bay leaf
A large pat of butter
a dash of salt
boiling water to rinse the rice
Melt the butter in the pan, and add the cardamom pods, cloves and bay leaf. Fry in the butter for a couple of mins, then add the rice and fry for another couple. Then add the chicken stock and tumeric, and cook as per usual. Tip into colander and rinse with boiling water.
I’ve also started adding two tins of chopped tomatoes to the pan, instead of one and blending them before doing so. I’ve also changed the water added before reducing the sauce in the final stage for chicken stock, this seems an improvement too.
I’ve you want to go for the full takeaway hit, add some chopped FRESH coriander ( or cilantro if you’re in the states ), near the end of the cooking process. Dried leaves from the store cupboard seem completely inadequate in adding that fragrant sensation to the dish.
