Chicken Kalia

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Chicken Kalia after marinading for a few hours

Chicken Kalia, [alt: chicken kalya] is a chicken curry from Mauritius that is made with yoghurt and lots of spices, this recipe was sent to us by one of our Mauritian visitors.

Don't hold back on the spices, even if some some of the quantities such as 2 tablespoons of cumin seeds, seem rather a lot. I even increased some of the quantities, see Chef's notes below.

Ingredients

• 1 x 1kg chicken, cut into serving pieces; see here
• 250ml yoghurt
• 2 cinnamon sticks (abut 3cm long)
• 3 split cardamoms
• 4 cloves
• 2 tablespoons powdered cumin
• 2 green chillies, slit
• pinch of turmeric
• 1 teaspoon mixed grated ginger and garlic
• 5 tablespoons of chopped coriander leaves
• salt and black pepper, to taste
• 2 onions, finely sliced
• 120ml mixed oil and ghee
• pinch of saffron

Method

1. 1. Add the chicken to deep cooking pan and mix-in all the ingredients apart from the onions, ghee and oil mixture and saffron. Marinate the chicken for 1 hour of more.
2. 2. Fry the onions in the ghee/oil mix until golden brown and crisp. Remove and set aside then pour the remaining oil into the pan with the chicken.
3. 3. Soak the saffron in half a cup of hot water and allow to infuse before pouring onto the chicken.
4. 4. Mix well, cover and cook over a low heat for about 40 minutes, or until the chicken is done. Add the fried onion, cook for a further 3 minutes and serve with rice.

Serving suggestions

This dish is best served with plain white rice or cumin rice or parathas.

Chef's notes

This was one of the best 'curries' I have tasted! Creamy and spicy but not too hot. I served it with chapatis and baby new potatoes. (pink fir apple) as we had just dug them that day and wanted to taste them!

For authenticity, I will leave the original recipe as it was given to Cookipedia, however, I meddled a little so I've noted the changes I made so I can re-create my version again as this will be made again and again.

• I left the slashed chicken pieces refrigerating in the marinade for 5 hours before cooking
• 3 tablespoons of lime juice
• Instead of yogurt I used crème fraiche hoping it would not split as yogurt sometimes does. It split!
• 6 fat garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
• Home made lazy ginger, about 50% by volume of the garlic, roughly grated
• 10 peppercorns, powdered
• 3 Indian green chillies, split
• 4 black cardamom pods, whole
• 1/2 cup chicken stock
• The remaining ingredients were unchanged from the recipe above
• Cooked in the oven for about an hour at 200° C (400° F - gas 6)

See also

• Get chicken pieces the economical way, joint the chicken yourself

[Category:Boiled or simmered]]