Poultry

I had this dish in Bangladesh and thought it was exquisite. It seemed to have come straight from the palaces of seventeenth-century Moghul rulers. It was a true korma, a stew cooked in yogurt, mild but exquisitely seasoned, and without any brown, yellow, or red spices to mar its pallor. There were some New World sliced green chilies scattered over the top, but they seemed a later addition. I have put them in—but even without them, the flavors are beyond compare. Of course, it helps to get a good-quality organic chicken. Have your butcher skin it and cut it into small serving pieces for you. In Bangladesh, this chicken was cooked in ghee (clarified butter, page 286). I generally cook in oil. I like to use a good sour yogurt here, such as the acidophilus yogurt I get from the health-food store. If you cannot get that, just add 1 tablespoon lemon juice to the ordinary supermarket yogurt. Serve this with rice or flatbreads or even in a Western way with potatoes and a vegetable.

Here is a creamy, coconut-enriched chicken curry that takes me back to the balmy southwest breezes of Kerala’s palm-lined coast. Serve with Plain Jasmine Rice and a green vegetable.

You could use any chicken parts you like for this recipe—dark meat, light meat, or a combination. The bones should stay in but the skin should be pulled off. This chicken needs to be marinated for at least 4 hours. Serve with Plain Basmati Rice, My Everyday Moong Dal, Spinach with Garlic and Cumin, a yogurt relish, and a salad to get the feel of a simple family meal in North India.

This very home-style Indian dish may best be compared to a New Orleans gumbo. It is the okra and tomatoes that give it the gumbo feel, but the seasonings are very North Indian. Serve with rice or with Indian breads.

Coat chicken legs with a spicy fresh-ginger– and cilantro-perfumed yogurt, then bake for an easy Indian weeknight dinner.

Here is another of my party favorites, as it is quite easy to prepare and may be done ahead of time and reheated. I do all the chopping in a food processor, which takes just a few minutes. You may, if you prefer, chop the onions by hand and grate the ginger finely and put the garlic through a garlic press. The results will be the same. I have used fresh spinach only because I grow so much of it; you may use frozen chopped spinach instead. For a dinner, I might serve this with Rice Pilaf with Almonds and Raisins, Eggplants in a North-South Sauce, and a yogurt relish.

Here the chicken is marinated overnight with most of the ingredients needed and then baked in its marinating dish, magically creating a curry. If a slightly sweet taste is desired, 2 tablespoons of golden raisins may be added to the marinade. Serve with rice and Green Lentils with Green Beans and Cilantro.

An 8–24-hour marination period is required here. This chicken tastes just as good cold as it does hot, making it perfect for everyday meals, formal dinners, and picnics. (Once cooked, if properly wrapped and refrigerated, the chicken will hold for 5–6 days.)

There is a whole family of Goan meat and chicken dishes that have in common the use of garlic, vinegar, and hot chilies—all of which help preserve the food and give it a slightly “pickled” feel. As in the case of the more famous vindaloos, the garlic and vinegar combination probably came from Portuguese culinary traditions—Goa was their colony for four hundred years or so. It was the Portuguese who introduced chilies to India in the late fifteenth century. Indians, already familiar with their own black pepper, took to them with a passion. The chilies used in Goa are often of the Kashmiri variety, which give off a very red color but are of medium heat. Each dish requires rather a lot of them and ends up being very hot and very red. I have used a mixture of cayenne and paprika. You can add more cayenne if you like. In Goa this is eaten with partially milled red-hulled rice. You could serve it with Plain Brown Rice, Plain Jasmine Rice, or Coconut Rice. Add vegetables and salads.

A karhai is an Indian wok (many anthropologists believe that the utensil actually originated in India), and this is a stir-fried dish. I like dark meat and prefer chicken thighs here, but lovers of white meat may use boned and skinned chicken breasts. Serve it with rice or Indian (or Middle Eastern) flatbreads. You could serve the Mushroom and Pea Curry on the side. You could also have this cold, even take it on a picnic.

I like to use bird’s-eye chilies here, but any fresh hot green chilies will do. Use only as much of the larger chilies as you think you can handle. I often make this when I am in a hurry, as it cooks fast. You could serve this with any rice dish. I like it with the Tomato Pullao. This is also great to take on picnics or serve at a summer lunch: fill pita bread pockets with this, spoon in a little Fresh Green Chutney, and eat!

A dish from the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu, this quick stir-fry has all the wonderful spices used in the cooking of the Chettiyars, a trading community—lots of black pepper, fennel seeds, mustard seeds, cinnamon, and the split pea, urad dal. (Yellow split peas may be substituted for the urad dal. They will be used here in a very southern way, as a seasoning.) This dish has a 30-minute marinating period, but it cooks in about 7 minutes. It is a good idea to have all the spices measured out and ready, as the stir-frying is done quickly. I like this chicken with Basmati Rice with Lentils and a green vegetable.

Here is a soup of colonial, British-Indian origin, born in the early days of the Raj and a favorite among the dwindling mixed-race Anglo-Indian community of India. All the ingredients and seasonings are completely Indian. It is just the way it is served (in a soup plate) and eaten (with a soup spoon) that is British. This soup may be served at the start of a meal, but it may also be offered as the main course for a Sunday lunch, the way the Anglo-Indians do. At such times, plain rice is served on the side, with diners adding as much as is desired to their soup plates, a little at a time so as not to solidify the soup in one go. I like to give my guests individual bowls of rice so that a single large bowl of rice does not have to move around the table like a whirling dervish.

Before cooking, the meat-spice mixture requires a rest in the refrigerator to bring all the flavors together and to give the kebabs their requisite melt-in-the-mouth tenderness. If you cannot get a baking pan of just this size, something a bit smaller or a bit larger will do. (You could also use a 6-inch-square cake tin and cut the kebabs into rectangles—in which case, bake for only 30 minutes.) Serve these pâté-like kebabs with drinks, offering flatbread pieces or crackers to eat them with, or serve them as part of a meal with vegetables or salads. They need an accompanying chutney, such as the Peshawari Red Pepper Chutney, page 243, or the Bengali-Style Tomato Chutney, page 244.

In Morocco, they make this elegant couscous with small Mediterranean pigeons, but squabs and small poussins will also do.

This Egyptian village dish usually made with pigeons (hamam) is just as good, and easier to make, with a good corn-fed chicken. Ferik is young green wheat which has been harvested before it is ripe and set alight between layers of straw. The moist young kernels are separated from the charred chaff and straw by threshing, then washed and dried and coarsely ground. There is a pleasant roughness and a lingering smoky flavor about this grain. You will find it (also spelled frika) in Middle Eastern stores. It needs to be washed in 2 or 3 changes of water.

Sour little red berries called barberries (zereshk in Persian) and yogurt give this chicken-and-rice dish an exciting flavor and texture. The woman who wrote out this recipe for me more than thirty years ago added a comment that it was the most famous and traditional of Iranian dishes.

This Iranian rice, a festive dish served at weddings, is as sumptuous as you get. You can see by its appearance why it is called “jeweled.” Iranian and Middle Eastern stores sell barberries (sour berries called zereshk), sugared orange peel, and slivered almonds and pistachios. Dried pitted sour cherries and cranberries can be found in some supermarkets.

Candied tangerine or orange peel is the sweet element in this festive Persian rice with carrots. Persian shops sell the candied peel, as well as slivered almonds and pistachios. To make the candied peel yourself, see the recipe that follows this one.

There is something very comforting about this homely Turkish pilaf in which the rice is cooked in the broth of the chicken. For an Arab version with pine nuts, flavored with cinnamon and cardamom, see the variation.