Bengali Chicken Curry with Potatoes

Firstly, the chicken isn’t Bengali. The recipe is, sort of, with my angle to it. You can get chicken from wherever, preferably one without hormones and such. This dish calls for chicken with bones (because they were born with bones and boneless chickens really have a hard time standing up…ah, but you knew that). The dish tastes better with that kind of chicken. The measures are for a dish for 4 people or two extremely hungry teenagers or for one person unwilling to share.
Ingredients:
8-10 pieces, medium size chicken
4 potatoes, small/medium, halved horizontally
4 Roma tomatoes, medium, quartered
1-inch piece ginger, grated
3-4 medium garlic cloves, grated
2 purple onions, medium, grated
2 medium green chilies, sliced thin
Spices:
2 tbsp turmeric
1-2 tbsp red chili (Kashmiri chili) powder (or if you’re scared, half it)
1 tbsp coriander powder
1 tbsp cumin powder
Garam Masala: 4 cloves, 1/2 stick cinnamon (small), 3cardamom, all ground together
2 bayleaf
3-4 tbsp grapeseed oil
Salt to taste
Recipe:
Grate the onions, ginger, garlic into a nice paste. Separate half the onions for sautéing.


Place the chicken in a bowl, and mix in the paste with salt, half the ginger, garlic, cumin, turmeric, and coriander along with the chilies.


Heat the oil in a flat-bottomed pan or a pressure cooker. When the oil is hot, add in the bay leaf with the freshly ground garam masala followed by the rest of the onion, ginger and garlic. Sauté it for 3-4 minutes, and then add the potatoes along with the rest of the turmeric and chili powder.


After the potatoes have softened a bit, add the tomatoes. Cook till the tomatoes are defeated in the fight against you (kidding!). Add some salt to taste. The kitchen should by now smell like a restaurant or else you’ve done something wrong, like set fire to it. Please check.


Finally, add the chicken marinating in the ginger/garlic/onion paste. Sauté it with another tbsp of oil. Once the chicken appears incorporated in the onion/tomato mix, and the potatoes half-cooked, add 1-1 and ½ cups of water, or enough to cover the chicken.


Lower the heat to medium, and cover the lid. Let the chicken cook in its juices and merge with the tomatoes. The turmeric should permeate through the dish. The reason to use Kashmiri chili powder is to get that red/orange color and the heat. But if you can’t find that, regular chili powder will do.


Alternatively, you could use a pressure cooker, sauté in it (the chicken, I mean), and then after the sautéing is complete, add water, put the lid on, wait for about 2-3 whistles, before turning the gas off.


If you want the curry to be less watery, remove the lid, and let the water evaporate a bit, the curry will be thicker. Adjust it based on how you’d like to eat this.


This should take you at the most, 30-40 minutes, because once it’s in the simmer phase, I’d strongly advise you to look for entertainment elsewhere. You could of course, stare at the pressure cooker and jump every time it shrieks, or watch the steam drip off the glass lid if you’re using a pan. That’s up to you, who am I to tell you how to use your time? But anyway, if you’ve made some white basmati rice alongside, then you can eat your chicken with it right after. If you’re a teenager and a very hungry one, you could eat the entire thing yourself. If you’re a polite adult, you may want to share it with someone.


It’s your call. Enjoy!