I immediately tucked in to this so I had to recreate the dish on a smaller plate to take a photo.
The red stuff is a sauce inspired by Indian food, so my book tells me. It calls for onions and red pepper, then stock and chopped tomatoes. It’s a bit spicy – onion seeds, hot green pepper, cinnamon, garlic, coriander, tamarind paste and ginger make up the flavours.
I got to cook a whole chicken. I’ve never done that before. In the oven for close to two hours, with the above sauce poured over and covered in foil. The foil kept the sauce and the chicken juicy.
The rice is basmati, with cardamom seeds and broken cinnamon. Cinnamon sticks are interesting, they smell really nice and I think I might dip one in some hot chocolate some time in the future.
I cooked this for four, my sister and her boyfriend were over so I made them a meal. It took over two hours in total, but it wasn’t really hard to cook. The hot weather didn’t really help, the kitchen was uncomfortable at times.
It was worth all the time and effort though because it tasted amazing. Even my sister’s boyfriend, who said he didn’t like Indian food, enjoyed it. The rice was fragrant but not overpowering, the chicken wasn’t at all dry, and the sauce had a nice mix of flavours.
I cooked two chickens and so there is one left over, I also cooked twice the amount of rice. Both foodstuffs are sitting in the fridge right now, the former will be used in Hoisin Chicken Wraps sometime this week and the latter will be used in Stuffed Red Peppers, which I am quite looking forward to. I don’t know how long either will keep in the fridge though, particularly the chicken.
