An Invitation to Indian Cooking - Madhur Jaffrey [43]
To serve: Place cutlets on a warm platter. Sprinkle with salt, freshly ground pepper, and lemon juice. Serve garnished with lemon wedges and Chinese or Italian parsley. With cutlets serve Rice with Peas or Rice with Potatoes and Cumin Seed and a green salad. If you like, you could serve boiled potatoes and peas. Almost all vegetables go with this dish.
Marinated broiled chicken
SERVES 4–6
This is a simple recipe in which the marinade, a mixture of onions, ginger, garlic, cumin, coriander, vinegar, and oil, is made in the electric blender. The chicken is marinated, then broiled. It could also be barbecued over charcoal.
3–3½ pounds chicken, preferably legs, thighs, and breasts, or a whole chicken, cut into serving pieces
MARINADE
2 medium-sized onions, peeled and coarsely chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
A piece of fresh ginger, about 1 inch long and 1 inch wide, peeled and coarsely chopped
2–3 fresh hot green chilies, or ¼–½ teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
1 tablespoon ground coriander
½ cup wine vinegar
½ cup olive or vegetable oil
2 teaspoons salt
⅛ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
GARNISH
Chinese parsley or Italian parsley, chopped
Combine all the ingredients for the marinade in the container of an electric blender. Blend at high speed until you have a smooth paste.
Pull off and discard the skin from chicken pieces. Prick chicken all over with a fork and place in a bowl. Pour marinade over chicken. Cover and refrigerate 2 to 3 hours (24 hours would be best.)
Fifty minutes before serving, heat your broiler. Remove chicken pieces from bowl and, with as much marinade clinging to them as possible, place on baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. Broil 15 minutes on each side or until chicken gets well browned. (Adjust distance from broiler so it does not brown too fast.)
To serve: Place chicken on a warm platter and sprinkle parsley over it. Serve with a rice dish, a green vegetable, and a dal.
Broiled chicken strips
SERVES 6–8
Chicken breasts are boned, cut into narrow strips, and then mixed with a paste consisting of oil, vinegar, onion, ginger, garlic, and fennel seed, and the “hot” (garam) spices: cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, black peppercorns, etc. The chicken sits in the marinade 4 to 5 hours. It is then broiled and served. This dish is very easy to prepare, since most of the work is done by the electric blender. Its taste is heavenly, lightly but definitely spiced. It is very versatile—I have successfully served it as an hors d’oeuvre with toothpicks, at lunches with salad, at big dinners along with a meat dish, and at picnics, having made it the night before. It tastes as good cold as it does hot.
Get your butcher to bone and skin the chicken breasts for you. Many supermarkets sell already boned and skinned chicken breast “cutlets” which could be used, or you could do the skinning and boning yourself without undue exertion.
3 pounds chicken breasts, boned and skinned (weight after boning and skinning)
MARINADE
5 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 medium-sized onion, peeled and chopped
1 whole head of garlic (each clove peeled and chopped)
A piece of fresh ginger, about 1-inch cube, peeled and chopped
2 tablespoons whole fennel seeds
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
Seeds from 8 cardamom pods
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
8 whole cloves
20 black peppercorns
½–¾ teaspoon cayenne (use as desired; these measures are for a mildly hot dish)
2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons tomato sauce
Combine all ingredients needed for the marinade in the container of an electric blender. Blend at high speed until you have a smooth paste.
Wipe all the chicken pieces thoroughly dry. Divide breasts in 2 sections and then cut each section into strips that are 1½ or 2 inches long and about ½ inch wide.
In a bowl combine the chicken