KARAHI RECIPES

Steps:

• Cook Chicken, or other meat.
• You can grill, fry or oven cook meat in any way you like. I often fry in oil adding a little turmeric and garlic. Once cooked set the pre-cooked meat aside.
• Base Sauce.
• Chop onions, ginger and Garlic roughly and fry in oil until cooked, add hot water, just enought to cover onions and garlic, you may not need all 500ml. Then simmer for 20 minutes.
• After 20 minutes take off heat let cool then blend with either a hand blender or in traditional blender, then set aside.
• Spice Mix.
• While the base sauce is cooling this is a good time to prepare you spice mix, just put all the spices in one bowl and mix together.
• The Curry.
• Heat oil to medium heat, and fry garlic and ginger for about 2 – 3 minutes, towards the end of the 3 minutes turn the heat down to very low.
• Once the oil, garlic and ginger have cooked and cooled a little add the spice mix a spoon at a time, you want to make a paste when the oil blends with the spices, so you may not need all the spice mix or you may need to add more oil.
• Once you have a runny oily paste turn the heat up very slightly, be very careful because if the spices burn the whole dish will be ruined. The trick is not to fry the spices just heat them sufficiently enough to bring out all the aromas and flavours, this should take only a few minutes.
• Then add the tomatoes, curry base, orange, salt, bay leaf, cinnamon, chicken stock cube and pre cooked chicken stirring the dish well.
• Let simmer for at least 20 mins but can be left for hours.
• 5 mins before you are ready to serve add the coriander and Ghee then dish up, I would recommend to serve with chapattis or basmati rice.

Steps:

• In a wok over medium heat, add oil.
• Once oil is hot, toss in the chopped onions and fry for 6-7 minutes or until the edges start to brown.
• Next, add the rinsed chicken pieces and stir until combined with the onion.
• Add yogurt, cumin, coriander seeds, red chilli powder, salt, pepper and ginger garlic paste and stir until the chicken pieces are coated.
• Continue stirring for about 5-6 minutes on high heat.
• Tip in the tomatoes, cilantro and chillies and stir. Add water.
• Cover the wok with a lid, turn the flame to medium to low and let the karahi cook for 20 minutes.
• After 20 minutes, remove the lid and turn the flame to high and let the water evaporate.
• Once the water evaporates about 10-15 minutes, start to stir again.
• You'll notice that the curry will release oil and you'll see a lovely sheen around the edge of the wok. At this point, add in some more cilantro and chilli and pop the lid back on and turn the flame to the lowest possible setting for 5-10 minutes. This is called the "dum" stage which is important to finish off the Karahi.
• Enjoy hot with pita bread or naan! Serves 5-6 people.