Chicken Chaap

Chicken Chaap

Background: Today I am going to share a recipe call Chicken Chaap. For them who doesn't know, it's a delicious curry type chicken preparation from Indian Mughlai cuisine origin. It's delicious and famous at the same time and as popular a dish as chicken tikka masala or makhani.

My suggestion to have it with either Nun or Rumali Roti, you can also try with Puri or Partha however it doesn't go good with Rice much. 

Chicken chap suppose to be a comparatively bigger pieces of chicken in a very thick and tighter gravy.

The following recipe is from Sumana Banerjee, my Mom. I don't claim it's authenticity but definitely claim it's delicious taste as I tries numbers of times and my guests are with  me in this :)

Ingredients:

• 2 - 3 lbs big chunks of chicken - preferably cut into approximately 2/3 inch size (medium to big chunk in size)
• 2-3 medium sized onions - sliced (not chopped, not diced)
• 6-8 green chillies - slices or slit
• 1-2 Roman tomato - Chopped finely
• Magoj or char Magaz (It's a combination of possibly 4 different seeds, Almond, Pumpkin, Cantaloup and watermelon, I might be wrong though. Very much available in any Indian or South east Asian grocery store) 
• Ginger - 3-4 inch portion
• Garlic - 4-5 cloves (depends on size)
• Whole Garam masala - cloves, bay leaves, cardamom and cinnamon.
•  Powdered garam masala - available in Indian store 
• salt, sugar, haldi powder, red chilli powder
• Oil to cook (vegetable or Sunflower oil, you can also use oil of your choice)

Method:

• Grind the Magaj to make think paste. Put some water while making the paste. add some little more water if required and keep aside
• take Ginger and garlic together and make a very thick paste and keep aside
• Slice the onions.
• Chopped the tomato.
• Slit the green chillies.
• Heat a non-stick pan, put generous amount of oil(2-4 table spoon)
• Once oil it hot, put the whole garam masalas. these will start sputter and awesome flavor should come. Add a little sugar now, this will caramelized and give a very nice red(ish) look to the masala we are preparing. 
• Put the onions and stir slowly, until getting transparent. ( put the stove in mid - garam masala tends to get burnt quickly and making the whole curry bitter)
• Quickly put tomato and stir until mushy.  
• Add ginger-garlic paste and the chillies. continue stir.
• add salt to taste and a little sugar if you want.
• Add the chicken eventually to this once you see all the ingredients are mushy and mixed well together. keep stiring well so that the chicken gets coated by this masala.
• Add haldi (a little more than normal) and red chilli powder (depends on how much spicy you want it)
• Add the Magoj paste and keep stiring until all the ingredients looks cooks well and you see oil coming out of it.
• Add some little water and lid on and let it cook.
• Open the lid in between to check if you need to stir. (to avoid any burn in the bottom of the pan.)