Mustard is indispensable to Bengali cuisine – mustard oil is the commonest cooking medium, mustard seeds are used for tempering, and mustard paste often serves as a base. But while it is common to cook fish in mustard gravy, it is not so common to prepare chicken in it. Growing up, it was never made at my home. This chicken dish bucks the practice: not only does it include mustard, but it also uses the quintessentially Bengali raw mango and mustard preserve aam kasundi. I concocted this recipe quite by accident. But the end result was so good, I never stopped making it.
Serves
4
-
Cook Time
30m
Ingredients
- 500 gm chicken
- 3-4 tbsp aam kasundi or Bengali-style mango mustard preserve (store-bought or homemade)
- 1 tbsp garlic paste
- 2-3 tbsp mustard oil
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ tsp turmeric powder
- ½ tsp Kashmiri red chilli powder
- 4-5 green chillies
Preparation
- Marinate chicken overnight with aam kasundi, half the garlic paste, turmeric powder, Kashmiri red chilli powder, green chillies and a tablespoon of mustard oil.
- Heat mustard oil in a pan, add garlic paste and sauté.
- Tip in marinated chicken and mix thoroughly.
- Add salt and cover the pan with a lid.
- Cook on low flame until the chicken softens. This will take around 20 minutes.
- Pour in one cup of boiling water. Cook until the gravy boils down to a semi-thick consistency.
- Drizzle half a teaspoon of mustard oil, mix well and take the chicken curry off the flame.
- Serve Aam Kasundi Murgi with steamed rice.
A financial analyst in the development sector, Debjani Chatterjee Alam is also a popular food blogger and home chef based in Kolkata. Her blog Debjanir Rannghar (www.kitchenofdebjani.com) is considered among the pioneering food blogs in India when it comes to Bengali recipe curation. Debjani tries to document traditional Bengali delicacies through her writing and her pop-ups, where she serves up with traditional Bengali delicacies.
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