Chicken Madras Recipe

Mistakenly is believed to come from south India and owes its name to the city of Madras. However, a Madras curry is not known in India and is a British invention or at least designed for the British taste so a classic BIR curry.

It is quite a fiery curry with a bit of heat and if you're new to Indian food then it may be a little too hot. However, once you get hooked on this cuisine a Madras curry will become a good yardstick to test a restaurant to see how they cope with this basic but very flavoursome curry.

Although this recipe is for chicken, any meat can be substituted or even a vegetable version.

The addition of lemon juice is an important one as lowers the heat from the chilli but leaves the flavour.

Cooking time: 5 - 10  minutes

Ingredients

Serves 1

Chefs spoon of vegetable oil
Chefs spoon of garlic and ginger paste
1 tablespoon watered-down tomato purée.
splash of lemon juice or 1/4 juice of a lemon
300ml base sauce

Spices

1 teaspoon Cumin powder
1 teaspoon Coriander powder
2 teaspoons of Mix powder
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon methi
1/4 teaspoon salt

8 pieces of pre-cooked chicken

Garnish with fresh Coriander

Method

Start off by heating up the vegetable oil in a frying pan.

Once hot add the garlic & ginger paste and stir for a few seconds but don't allow it to burn as the garlic will go bitter.

Add all the spices plus the tomato puree and stir quickly for a few seconds,  add 100ml of base sauce to loosen the mixture.

Add the pre-cooked chicken and the splash of lemon juice and allow the sauce to thicken, scraping any dried sauce on the edges back into the pan.

Once thicken add 100ml more sauce and repeat the process.

Finally, add the remainder of the sauce and reduce to the decided consistency. You should see the oil rising onto the surface, although this can be skimmed off for a lower fat version it carries with it a lot of the end flavour so it's recommended to serve with the oil remaining.

Serve with rice and a little garnish of fresh coriander.