Secret Recipe Club: Chicken Curry with Whole Spices

When we read about Amanda's (of Amanda's Cookin') Secret Recipe Club, we hoped we weren't too late to join. Well, we were. For that month's "meeting" anyway. But we were "inducted" into the club shortly afterward and are thrilled to be participating in July's posting.

The SRC is a group of food blogging enthusiasts who are assigned another person's blog from which they must read, choose, make and post about, a recipe. The "secret" part is that the person whose recipe we're making doesn't know who we are. All postings are posted at the same time on the same date (what we call the Big Reveal), and it's all great fun.

The blog we were assigned is Passionate About Baking. This beautifully written and photographed blog is by Deeba Rajpal of India. Now, one would think we would have chosen one of her many dozens of baking recipes. However, since it is our first SRC, we decided to celebrate "first timeness" and use Deeba's recipe for "Khade Masale Ka Korma," or "Chicken Curry with Whole Spices" to make our first homemade curry. This particular curry called to us not only because of the use of whole spices but also because of the wonderful simplicity of the dish.

The khade mesale, or whole spices used in this dish

We followed Deeba's recipe, found here, halving the amounts of the ingredients (since we were cooking for two), using Szechuan peppercorns in place of black, and serving the chicken with steamed basmati rice. The result was chicken that was cooked to a perfect texture in an aromatic curry sauce that had a flavorful and comforting spiciness to it. In a word, delightful.

The base of the dish, ghee (or clarified butter)

First, we melted some ghee...

...and sauteed sliced onions in it.

We added some green cardamom pods, whole cloves and Szechuan peppercorns.

Next, we added onion, garlic and ginger that we had ground quickly in a food processor.

This curry gets additional flavor as well as its color from hot paprika.

A few tablespoons of yogurt and some water were added before we put on the cover and allowed the chicken to cook.

The finished product, served with basmati rice.