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Restaurant favorites at home

• Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
• December 4, 2020
• 1272

Trying recipes from cultures outside your own often carries a lesson or two you can use elsewhere in your cooking. When we made the dressing for our Thanksgiving dinner, we took the time to toast the chopped walnuts before adding them to the mix. The result is a little more flavor and a crunch that holds up to being baked among sodden bread cubes for an hour.

Toasting dry ingredients before using them in a recipe comes from cooking Indian dishes, where such a step is all-important in many recipes. Spices go into a dry, medium hot pan to be tossed around until they begin to brown and sometimes pop. You know they’re ready to use when they release their fragrance into the kitchen.

From there, they can be ground in a spice grinder or, as I did last night, in a mortar and pestle, which is good for your arm muscles and a sort of zen experience if you have the time.

The recipe was chicken vindaloo, a favorite dish of mine that satisfied my wife’s frequent pregnant craving for Indian food. Even chicken soup or a plain bagel brings nightlong heartburn for the poor thing, so there’s no point in skipping the spice.

I’ve never made vindaloo at home but almost always order it on the rare occasions when we visit an Indian restaurant. There, it has always come with small hunks of potato, but no recipe I found called for them, so I left it out.

Potatoes always seemed like an incongruity in such a dish anyway. When I think potatoes, I think Europe and likely Russia, but that reveals my potato ignorance.

Many curries from the south of India include potatoes, chiefly because they are a cheap addition and plentiful in that part of the country where they are grown heavily. Most dishes develop because of what is at hand that the cook can afford to include. Potatoes find their way into dishes worldwide exactly for that reason.

For this recipe you can add cubed potatoes if you like and adjust the heat as desired. I used dried cayenne peppers because that’s what was in the house, so I only used three.

Dried chilies carry differing levels of heat — an authentic Indian variety would be Kashmiri red chilies, but good luck finding them without a day trip to larger markets.

We served this with quinoa rather than rice and a batch of fresh naan bread. You’ll make a paste first, then begin cooking. Note the lime juice is a substitute for tamarind paste, another ingredient you would have difficulty locating. If you grind the toasted spices by hand, be patient and be sure you have a true powder before adding the other ingredients. Use any cut of chicken you like.

CHICKEN VINDALOO

For the paste:

3-5 dried cayenne chilies (or 10 Kashmiri chilies)

2 tablespoons coriander seeds

4 cloves

1-inch piece cinnamon stick

3 green cardamom pods (or use powdered)

10 black peppercorns

1 teaspoon cumin seed

8 cloves fresh garlic, minced

1-inch piece fresh ginger, minced

1 tablespoon vinegar

2 tablespoons lime juice (or tamarind paste)

Over medium heat in a dry skillet, toast the chilies, coriander, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, peppercorns and cumin until very slightly brown and fragrant. Allow to cool, then grind together in a spice grinder or mash in a mortar and pestle until a fine powder. Add the garlic, ginger, vinegar and lime juice or tamarind and continue mashing or grinding until you have a smooth paste, adding a little water as needed. Set aside.

For the curry:

4 tablespoons canola oil

2 cups chopped yellow onions

5-6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces

2 Roma tomatoes, diced

1/3 cup plain yogurt

1 cup water or chicken stock

4-5 tablespoons (or more) tomato paste

1 teaspoon turmeric powder

Salt and pepper

Heat a heavy bottomed pan with a lid over medium high heat, then add the oil and onions. Cook, stirring often, until soft and beginning to turn golden. Add the chicken and cook for about 4 minutes. Add all of the vindaloo paste and stir well. Add the tomatoes, yogurt, water or stock and tomato paste. Bring to a simmer, cover and cook 20 minutes, stirring and checking thickness often. Add the turmeric, taste for salt and cook 20 minutes more. Serve over rice or other grain and naan on the side.