Jack's Food Blog

This simple chicken curry recipe is rich, tasty and delicious. It uses coconut milk for creaminess, coriander for freshness, and tons of spices for an authentic flavour.

The recipe has a lot of ingredients, but really does taste better than what you can buy in the supermarkets. This will easily make 6 portions, and it’s a great one to chuck in the fridge and enjoy for the next few days after cooking. It will also freeze pretty well.

Ingredients:

• 3 chicken breasts
• Spice mix (below)
• 1 red pepper, 0.5 yellow peppers.
• 1 large onion
• 1 large stick of celery
• 1 400g can of coconut milk
• Handful of coriander
• Handful of cherry tomatoes
• Can of chopped tomatoes

How to do it

First, at least 2 hours before you want to be eating, pound the following ingredients together in a pestle and mortar:

Spice mix:

First off, I find that curry recipes are not an exact science. If you’re missing one of the lower down ingredients, it should still taste amazing.

• 1.5 tablespoons of garam masala
• 1.5 tablespoons of coriander seeds
• 1.5 tablespoons of cumin seeds
• 3 large garlic cloves
• 15g fresh ginger
• 1 scotch bonnet chilli
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
• 2 teaspoons turmeric
• 0.25 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• Seeds from 2 cardamom pods
• 2 cloves
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 0.5 teaspoons fennel seeds
• 0.5 teaspoons mustard seeds
• 0.5 teaspoons celery seeds
• 0.25 teaspoons cinnamon

Once it’s ground into a thick paste, split this in half and put one aside for later, then add a tablespoon of olive oil to the other. This is a marinade, so slice your chicken up, then slap the sweet-smelling sauce all over it.

Leave it for at least an hour before cooking.

Once it’s nicely marinated, grab a casserole or shallow casserole (as I used), heat this up on a high heat with a touch of oil, then add the chicken. You’re just looking to seal it, so blast it all over, then remove it from the pan.

Turn the heat down, then add your onion and celery, very finely chopped. You may need a touch more oil at this point, or a tiny bit of water to keep everything from sticking.

Fry this for around 10 minutes, then add the other half of the spice mix. If it’s not smelling amazing, you’ve done something wrong!

This is the time to start skinning the cherry tomatoes (if you don’t know how, try here), then add them 5 minutes after you put in the spices. 5 minutes after that, the tinned tomatoes go in too.

Let this bubble away for 10 minutes, then re-add the chicken, along with the peppers. Now pop the lid on, and let it cook for another 15 minutes. After that, lid off again, and cook for 15 minutes, or until it gets very thick and the peppers are softening nicely.

Now, add the coconut milk, along with the coriander, chopped finely.

Cook this until the sauce becomes thick and rich, and you’re ready to go!

Serve with rice, and whatever else you like to eat your Indian food with!

For another delicious one-pot recipe, this time originating from America, check out my Chicken and Chorizo Jambalaya recipe

Thanks for reading!