Chicken / Phicken Karhai

This is one variation of a chicken karhai recipe, works with real or fake chicken. The ratios below are not quite precise, so adjust as you see fit, e.g add in one more tomatoe if they don’t look right.

Ingredients

• 350-500 gms vegan or real chicken
• 2 onions sliced
• 3 tomatoes diced (not canned)
• 3-4 indian chillis, chopped
• 5-6 indian dry chillis, whole
• 1 tsp garlic crushed (or fresh if feeling it)
• 1/2 inch ginger, cut into strips
• coriander (diced)
• spinach (optional, rinsed)
• lime or lemon

Spices

Spices vary a lot in different home style recipes. This particular recipe gets its flavour from the black pepper and fresh chilli.

• 2 tsp salt
• 1-2 tsp cumin seeds
• ground black pepper (if pre-ground, use less, or better, make this dish another day)

Steps

1. Put most of the salt and grind a bunch of black pepper on the chicken, and squeeze half the lime/lemon, set aside. Grind enough black pepper to mostly cover the chicken, but not so much that its coated black.
2. heat oil to medium, fry onions for 5-6 minutes, lower heat. (Use more oil than you think you should)
3. add in cumin seeds, fry for 1/2 minute.
4. Add dry and fresh chilli, fry 1-2 minutes.
5. Add garlic and half the ginger (optional), fry for a 1 minute.
6. Add chicken, increase heat a bit, keep stirring for 2-3 minutes so all the pieces get a bit stir fried and coated with oil.
7. Add tomotoes, stir through for 2 minutes. Add the rest of the salt.
8. lower heat and leave for 7-8 minutes, longer if real chicken. Stir every few minutes. The oil should start seperating from the tomatoes. At some point in this step squeeze the other half of the lime/lemon.
9. Some chicken / phicken can take a while too cook, so if this is a tough bird, add 1/4-1/2 cup of water and let simmer for 5-6 more minutes.
10. optional: Add spinach when chicken seems mostly cooked, stir for 2-3 minutes.
11. Sprinkle coriander and remaining ginger and take off heat.

Optional: Add chopped fresh ginger and chilli as garnish, serve with lemon or lime wedges.

Notes:

• don’t use ginger paste, just sprinkle some fresh ginger at the end. Especially don’t use the combined ginger/garlic paste, thats just wrong.
• for this dish chicken doesn’t need to be marinated, whether real or fake, so the 10 minutes is enough.
• another variation of this dish swaps out the black pepper for any of the standard desi spice mix of chilli/tumeric/whatever.