Pudina Chicken

Hello, boys and girls!

Welcome to cooking with Varun! Back in 2010, when I first visited Melbourne, Australia, on my business visa, cooking and I had never really been introduced. I could make scrambled eggs (that started off as omelettes), grilled cheese sandwiches, and instant noodles, in the kitchen of my company booked service apartment, but that was the extent of it. It was no wonder, therefore, that my loyalty card from the local pizzeria had more holes than a block of Swiss cheese (on account of the punching), and that my relatives saw my pretty mug every weekend whether or not they had invited me over.

On my slightly longer trip later that year, I stayed with a colleague, Curly-&-Burly, at his apartment. His wife, who had a bun in the oven, had travelled back to the mothership to be with her parents and in doing so had kindly left behind a side of the bed for me to sleep on. Curly-&-Burly was a nice guy, very helpful, very accommodating, and also a very good cook. He would cook big batches of food, with my 'help', a couple of days a week and stick the rest in the fridge for nights when he was pulling ungodly hours at work. Every Friday, however, we'd stroll over to the pizza joints close to the station after getting off the train, buy a couple of large pizzas (they'd always be on a promotional offer), and carry them home, all the time resisting the urge to snack on a slice or 3 as we walked. It was while living here that I realized the wisdom of the words, 'Every pizza is a personal pizza if you try really hard and believe in your self!'. When we weren't tucking away pizzas, we were stuffing our faces with other not-so-healthy-fare and then burning it all off at the gym the next day. On days that we did cook, Curly-&-Burly did the cooking, and I did the prepping and washing up. I thought, initially, that this was a pretty sweet deal, but after several nights of weeping as I chopped onions, and then found myself elbow deep in soap suds as I scrubbed the saucepans, I realized how wrong I was. How. Very. Wrong. I. Was. Curly-&-Burly had this one chicken dish he'd make that was out of this world, that I could never get enough of, that I would beg him to make almost every week. He was a good egg, so he'd agree and ask me start prepping the ingredients. The downside, was it needed 6 onions. 6 tear-inducing, evil, purple grenades, that before I was a third of the way through, had tears running down my cheeks, as I muddled blindly through my task, paying little attention to whether the knife came down on the bloody onion or my poor finger. Spoiler alert, my finger didn't always escape unharmed. It was well worth the pain though, because the chicken always went down a treat and always left me waiting for next week.

This recipe, thankfully, has no onions so you can throw your fingers up in the air and do a little bhangra to celebrate. This is something I put together while pottering with my coriander chicken recipe because I wanted to try something different but couldn't be too bothered to really experiment. But as they say in cricket, it doesn't matter how the runs come, as long as they come, the resulting dish was the important bit, my laziness wasn't!

For my Pudina Chicken, you will need the following:
 

Chicken	500 gms (boneless, if you can wangle it)
Pudina (mint) leaves	2 big handfuls
Coriander leaves	1 big handful
Green chillies	3
Garlic	4-5 cloves
Ginger	1" piece
Cashews	10
Tomato	1 medium
Red chilli powder	2-3 tsp
Coriander powder	2-3 tsp
Cumin powder	1 tsp
Garam masala	1 tsp
Ginger garlic paste	2 tsp
Yoghurt	3 tbsp
Cloves	3
Cardamom pods	3
Cinnamon	small piece
Salt	to taste
Cooking oil

Prep:

Marinade:

1. Dice the chicken.
2. Grab a bowl.
3. Drop the chicken in.
4. Plop on the yoghurt.
5. Sprinkle in the red chilli powder, coriander powder, cumin powder, and 2 tsp salt.
6. Spoon in the ginger garlic paste.
7. Mix well until the chicken is nicely coated.
8. Pop a lid or clear wrap on.
9. Stick it in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Pudina (mint) paste:

1. Grab a grinder.
2. Stuff in the pudina (mint) leaves.
3. Stuff in the coriander leaves.
4. Stick in the chillies.
5. Pop in the garlic.
6. Pop in the ginger.
7. Quarter and toss in the tomato.
8. Stick in the cashews.
9. Pinch in some salt.
10. Splash in some water.
11. Blitz.

Method:

1. Turn on the gas.
2. Bung a pan on.
3. Splash in some oil.
4. Count to 20.
5. Bounce in the cloves, cardamom pods, and the cinnamon.
6. Wait for a few seconds until you can smell the spices.
7. Plop in the marinated chicken and listen to the pan hiss and spit.
8. Crank the heat up a notch or two to get a nice sear on the chicken. (Don't let it stick and burn!)
9. Drop the heat.
10. Splash in a cup of water and pop a lid on.
11. Cook for about 20 minutes until the chicken is nearly done.
12. Take the lid off.
13. Spoon in the pudina paste.
14. Add salt to taste. (Remember that your marinade and paste have salt!)
15. Mix well and cook for about 5 minutes.
16. Drop the heat and bring to a simmer.
17. Sprinkle on the garam masala.
18. Cook for a couple of minutes.
19. Taste test.
20. Turn the gas off.
21. Serve with hot rotis.
22. Stuff face.
23. Bask in the glory of your successfully executed dish.

Tip: No reason why this wouldn't work with big soft chunks of paneer.

And remember, overeating is a myth, a full tummy is a happy tummy!