An Invitation to Indian Cooking - Madhur Jaffrey [47]
Pour in the beaten eggs. Sprinkle on salt and pepper lightly. Stir and move eggs around with a fork. Indians like their scrambled eggs rather hard (cooked about 3 minutes), but you can stop whenever the desired consistency has been achieved.
To serve: While some Indians eat their scrambled eggs with toast, others eat them with hot parathas, chapatis, or pooris.
Chicken Moghlai
SERVES 6
This rich, elaborate, saffron-flavored dish justifies the time taken in preparing it by its exquisite taste and appearance. It has a burnt-red color and smells of cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon. It tastes even better if you cook it a night before serving it, thus allowing the sauce to act as a marinade for the chicken.
I use legs, thighs, and breasts of chicken for this recipe, but you could buy a whole 2½–3-pound chicken and have it cut into smallish serving portions. It may, then, feed only 4 people. You could also use 2 or 3 squabs, skinned and quartered, or 6 whole quail, skinned, or 6 whole partridges, skinned.
2½–3 pounds chicken legs, thighs, and breasts
4 medium-sized onions, 2 peeled and chopped and 2 cut into half lengthwise, then sliced into thin half-rings
A piece of fresh ginger, about 1½ inches long and 1 inch wide, peeled and chopped
8 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
10 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cinnamon sticks, 2½–3 inches long
2 bay leaves
10 cardamom pods, slightly crushed
10 whole cloves
1 teaspoon whole cumin seed
1½ tablespoons ground coriander*
½ tablespoon ground cumin*
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
¼–½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 tablespoons yogurt
¼ cup tomato sauce
1–1½ teaspoons salt
1 well-packed teaspoon leaf saffron, roasted and crumbled
1 tablespoon warm milk
*Dry-roasted together, following instructions for roasting ground coriander.
Skin the chicken pieces. Quarter the breasts and divide the legs into drumstick and thigh. Pat chicken dry and set aside.
Put the chopped onions, ginger, and garlic in the container of an electric blender along with 4 tablespoons of water. Blend at high speed until you have a smooth paste.
In a 10-inch, heavy-bottomed pot, heat 8 tablespoons of the oil. Put in the sliced onions and fry, stirring, over a medium-high flame for 10 to 12 minutes or until onions are dark brown and crisp but not black and burned. Remove them with a slotted spoon and set aside in bowl or plate.
Raise heat to high and put the chicken pieces in the same oil a few at a time. Without letting chicken cook too much, brown to as dark a color as possible. Remove each batch to a platter.
Turn heat down to medium high. Add remaining 2 tablespoons of oil to the pot, and put in the cinnamon sticks, the bay leaves, the cardamom pods, the cloves, and the cumin seed. Stir and turn the spices once. Now put in the paste from the blender, and fry, stirring, for 10 minutes. Turn heat down to medium and add the dry-roasted coriander and cumin powder, the turmeric, and the cayenne pepper. Stir and mix for 1 minute.
Add at intervals, constantly stirring and frying, the yogurt, a little bit at a time, the tomato sauce, and after another minute, the chicken pieces and salt, and finally, after another 2 minutes, ½ cup water. Mix well, bring to a boil, cover, lower heat, and simmer gently for 30 minutes, turning chicken pieces gently every 8 to 10 minutes.
While the chicken is cooking, soak saffron in warm milk for 20 to 30 minutes.
When chicken is cooked, add the browned onions and the saffron-milk. Mix, cover, and simmer gently another 5 minutes.
To serve: This royal dish can be served very simply with pooris and a relish, or it can be a part of a banquet along with a pullao, a baked stuffed fish, and Kheer for dessert.
Eggs Moghlai
SERVES 6
Follow preceding recipe for Chicken Moghlai, but substitute 12 hard-boiled eggs for the chicken.
Omit the step in which chicken is browned, and cook hard-boiled eggs in the sauce for only about 20 minutes. Put browned onions and saffron-milk over eggs and cook gently another 5 minutes.
To serve: See preceding recipe.
Marinated