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Gujarati Curried Chicken

There is good news to report! After having a conversation with Rosemary, author of Cooking in Sens, about beautiful skillets, my dad, a consummate charity shop ferret, received instructions to find me one. Not only did the ol’ chap deliver, he delivered in style – the skillet you can see below is not only in my eyes beautiful, it is made by AGA. Such a pan would normally set one back at least £60; this pan set us back £5 and is in jolly fine fettle. It appears that one may find it rather difficult to extoll the virtues of perseverance in charity shopping too much.

Frugal has now returned from his excursion to the wonderful Aylesbury – goodies have been purchased. You see, Aylesbury is a rather more ethnically diverse area of the world than is west Wales. As such, the supermarkets tend to stock all manner of obscure, though delightful, spices. Black mustard seeds, for instance, have proved rather tricky to find here in Aberystwyth, but they were quickly stumbled across in the back-end of Buckinghamshire. Naturally, both recent acquisitions simply had to be made use of, something this recipe does rather well. The spice mix for this curried chicken comes, roughly speaking, from a simply wonderful Indian recipe book penned by Laxmi Khurana. However, the recipe itself was not followed; it originally contained potato, no fresh tomatoes and occupied a place in the world which does not usually permit use of the humble onion. In my, admittedly humble, opinion this recipe and its colours really shows off the virtues of a good, cast iron, skillet – so, please enjoy!

Gujarati Curried Chicken

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 200g chicken, cooked or uncooked

• 1 onion, finely sliced

• ½ tsp whole cumin seeds

• 1 tsp black mustard seeds

• ½ tsp ground turmeric

• ½ tsp ground cumin

• ½ tsp ground coriander

• 60 – 100ml water

• 2 tsp tomato puree

• 1 fresh chilli, sliced

• 10-12 cherry tomatoes, halved

• A handful of fresh coriander

• A spoonful of natural yoghurt

Method:

1. Begin by toasting the whole cumin and mustard seeds in a good glug of cooking oil. Cook these until they start to pop, before adding the rest of the spices. After 2 minutes add the onion and cook for a further 5 minutes. Add the puree and water, stir to make a sauce before adding the chicken – cook until the chicken is hot through. Some water may be needed before serving. Scatter over the tomatoes, chilli, coriander and yoghurt. Serve with rice or naan.

Cost: We used the chicken from a previous meal, so in some sense its price was factored in elsewhere. Anyway, if one takes each and every ingredient into account, this quick and easy curry should cost one no more than around £1.60.

107 replies on “Gujarati Curried Chicken”

This is ironic! Gujarat is the only state in India that’s officially vegetarian! 😀

Guarati’s don’t eat meat, poultry, fish, eggs, onions or garlic. When I saw your post title I thought maybe the spice-list for the recipe included something that’s especially “Gujarati” like sev or caraway seeds or something else – does the original recipe include something special like that?

But at the end of the day, the curry looks gorgeous and totally shows how Indian cooking doesn’t have to be complicated!

I have skillet envy too 😉 I love charity shops but we don´t have too many of them round here. I have to wait for my “fix” when I get to London but I´m not sure Easy Jet would be impressed with my loading up my luggage with a cast iron skillet! Anyway, back to the gorgeous recipe. I miss curry so much and make it here when I can but I often find that recipes call for ingredients or spices that I don´t have. I was so pleased to start reading your recipe and as I read down the list I was thinking “yes, I´ve got that spice, ooh and that one”. Will most definitely be making this soon with some of our home reared chicken. Thank you!

I have to join in the chorus of “oh gorgeous skillet!” here, although I do have a lovely and huge cast iron pan myself – but a girl (or a guy) can never have enough kitchen toys, can we? And thrift shops are the best place (next to someplace like TKMaxx) for kitchen things. And home decor… and… yep. I miss living in Chester and the junk shops there – I used to adore them!

The curry looks fantastic as well, and I have to try something like it – I usually make simmered curries, much more liquid but this looks particularly enticing with the nearly-dry sauce and all that fresh stuff scattered on top!

Now there’s one gorgeous curry! And the skillet, Nick, what a lucky find! (though, as you point out, your perseverance helped luck along!) like you, I love the addition of fresh tomatoes, especially the cherry variety, added before serving along with a good handful of fresh coriander. Makes that delectable curry stunning. (If this is your first cast iron skillet, I just wrote a brief post – spreenkle #5 – on the care of them.) Wishing you many happy years with your new/old skillet!

Fantastic! I love a good curry and this looks so fun and delicious. I too have an old Dutch oven that I adore. It looks as if it’s seen better days but it keeps on cooking and cooks perfectly. I couldn’t imagine my little kitchen without it. Welcome back!

I have to add my voice to the chorus and say that you have yourself a beautiful skillet. What an amazing find! I feel like things like that are getting harder and harder to score. I think most of it is scooped up by professional resalers, and what is left has a lot of competition. Even the Salvation went online and searchable last year!

In any case, kudos to your dad! and that curried chicken looks amazing!

That really is a beautiful skillet. I love cooking with cast iron. And such a beautifully simple dish. Looks great.

our dads seem to have the same propensity for pre-loved items. who needs a recipe when you can create such a lovely dish? i am having curry as we speak albeit a much different yellow curry made by the hubby from pre-made curry paste and contains the potatoes i love so much.

Yippeee a blog post with “Gujarati” in it! Oh it’s chicken. Oh other readers have pointed out that most Gujus are vegetarian though most of my young cousins in the UK aren’t! And also hubbies of Gujus like mine! Also we are a branch of guju that eats loads of onions and garlic.
Was surprised there was no chili powder but I’m sure the fresh chili gave sufficient heat.
The Laxmi Khurana book is awesome…one of my most thumbed ones despite the lack of pictures (I’m assuming that you have the same one as me)
Now to your GORGEOUS skillet….from a charity shop. Awesome. Did you have to season it? I got given a ridged one that I managed to burn food on yesterday so over the weekend will be doing plenty of seasoning. I cannot wait to see what bread type things you make on your skillet and am waiting here with pen in hand for the recipe.

Yes, I did mean to write something about Gujus being veggie… but forgot. I think it’s a nice twist though. I was going to add chilli powder, but I often find it impairs flavour since you need to use quite a lot… cayenne pepper is much better. I think I must do – it’s on my kindle. I don’t know what seasoning a skillet is… it works perfectly though.. Glad you like it.

I am completely jealous of your awesome new skillet. I also live in an area where one struggles to sometimes find more interesting ingredients but I’ve found online resources like spiceshop.co.uk and theasiancookshop.co.uk excellent for the stranger herbs and spices and seasonings that are otherwise a total hassle to track down!

Wonderful! I couldn’t survive without a good cast iron. I check out the second hand store here at least a couple times a week; it’s so exciting when there’s a great find like that skillet! And the curry looks incredible. Nice work!

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