This chicken curry with mushrooms and mint —and a whole lot of other ingredients and spices— is another of the hidden gems of Indian Diasporan cooking from Africa's Eastern Seaboard. It's not difficult to cook, but nor is it a ten-minute TV dinner.
Poulet-vous manger avec moi, ce soir?
This is a another recipe that I learned in Durban from Mrs Panday, who also taught me the recipes for this fantastic lamb curry with coconut, cashews and spinach and this Indian Ocean lamb and fennel curry, among various others.
Mrs Panday told me that, while this recipe is very much based in the Parsi cooking traditions that her family had brought with them to Africa, this one had been adapted over the years to make use on ingredients readily available on South Africa's Eastern Seaboard to replace some of the Indian ingredients less readily available—note the use of Coleman's English Mustard, for example.
I think it is a recipe where you can definitely trace its Parsi backbone; that Mughlai influence. For example, a lot of Diasporan Indian cooking in KwaZulu-Natal uses fresh mint, something that many food historians cite as being something that the Parsi took with them to India when they left the Middle East
Dress it up, dress it down
I'm doing the original chicken version I was taught here. But this is a truly versatile recipe. I've done posh versions with guinea fowl and quail—which were fantastic, obviously. But, it's also great as a vegan recipe. See below.
The heat in this dish does not come from the spices used in the main part of the cooking, but what goes into the marinade. I would classify this as a "medium spicy" dish. But, if you're not so keen on fire, you can either reduce how much dried chilli you use in the marinade and/or fewer green chillies in the main part of the cooking.
This version is for 2 to 3 diners, but you can readily scale up quantities. Please note that the images here are indicative, both in terms of me cooking them in slightly smaller quantities and in terms of them including images from this occasion and a previous occasion when I cooked the vegan version.
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Shopping list
for the chicken marinade/sauce base
4 large spring onions, (or ½ an onion); washed
2 dried red chillies
3 cloves of garlic
A "thumb" of fresh ginger, peeled
A small clutch of fresh coriander
The juice and rind of half a fresh lemon
1 tbspn of chutney (ideally Mrs Balls Original Chutney)
1 tspn garam masala
1 tspn sunflower oil
A few cloves
1 tspn Coleman's English Mustard
salt and pepper to taste
for the chicken curry with mushrooms and mint
Enough chicken on the bone (legs, thighs etc.) for 2 to 3 diners; skin on
Approx. 300g closed cup mushrooms, cut into thick slices
2 large onions (red or brown), halved and thinly sliced
4 or 5 sticks of celery, thickly chopped
The celery leaves from the young stems (optional)
3 medium fresh bell peppers (or Romano peppers), sliced into rings
2 green chillies; de-seeded and sliced
500ml chicken stock (or vegetable stock)
1 bay leaf—dried or fresh
4 or 5 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
½ tspn whole cloves
½ tspn fennel seeds
A generous clutch of fresh coriander, roughly chopped
A generous clutch of fresh mint, roughly chopped
2 tspns mild Madras curry powder
2 tspns garam masala
1 tspn ground turmeric
1 tbspn cornflour, sifted
Approx. 40g creamed coconut, finely grated
Approx. 250ml hot water
salt and pepper to taste
for the sides and condiments
Rice or naan breads. Traditionally this would be Durban "yellow rice"
Raitha — I'm doing a version that uses both cucumber and fresh mint, mirroring the cooked mint in the main dish
Sambal — a version with chopped tomatoes, spring onions and coriander in vinegar
Cooking Method
the chicken marinade/sauce base
Make your marinade using a mini-chopper or food processor. Add all of your fresh and dried ingredients, adding the lemon juice and oil last
Do this some time before cooking the dish—ideally 24 hours before. Baste your chicken on both sides with the marinade and store in the fridge in a covered dish
the chicken curry with mushrooms
In an appropriate pan, heat a little of the oil on a medium-high heat. Add the chicken and all of its marinade, ensuring that the chicken browns. Once it has suitably browned on both sides, lift out of the pan. Keep it gently cooking/crisping in the oven—unless you plan to prepare the final dish later, which is fine—in which case store it covered. Deglaze the remaining ingredients and liquid in the pan with a little water
Add a generous dash of the chicken stock and sift in the cornflour. Stir in until absorbed. Then increase to a fairly high heat and reduce the liquid, stirring almost constantly. You don't need the sauce to fully thicken yet, only for the cornflour to be fully assimilated and for it to reduce notably. Remove from the heat and place to one side
In a large pan or kadai, heat the sunflower oil on a medium heat. Add 1 tspn each of the garam masala and Madras mild curry powder, along with all the other whole dried spices. But, do not add the turmeric or the bay leaf just yet
Once the aromas are released, add the onions and stir in. As soon as they begin to soften, add the green chillies, stirring in. After a few minutes, add the bell peppers
When the peppers begin to soften, add the celery and stir in, coating with the juices. If the pan becomes too dry, add a little more of the stock. When the celery turns a little glassy—about 5mins—add the bay leaf, turmeric, the finely grated creamed coconut and the remainder of the Madras curry powder. Cook at a healthy simmer for a further 4 or 5mins, stirring occasionally
Add the coriander and celery leaves (if using) to the top of the pan. Pour in the remaining stock and top up with additional hot water as needed i.e. don't add all of it if not necessary. Fold in the coriander and leaves and simmer, uncovered, for approx. 10 to 12mins, stirring occasionally as the liquid reduces. If it does so too soon, simply add a little additional hot water
When the liquid in the pan shows notable signs of reducing, add the "sauce" made earlier with the marinade and chicken juices back into the pan. Mix in gently, ensuring these elements combine. Add the chicken back into the pan so that crisper skin side remains above the surface of the liquid. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for about 5mins—or until the sauce shows signs of thickening slightly
Add the sliced mushrooms to the pan. This bit can be a little tricky: you want to mix them into the simmering liquid so that they cook without flipping the chicken over. If the sauce has already reduced, making this difficult, add a little more hot water—don't worry too much if it appears a little to watery; the uncovered cooking method makes reduction easy. Simmer gently for about 5 to 6mins
When the mushrooms are half-cooked, add the chopped mint and fold in gently. Simmer until you have achieved the desired consistency for the sauce, adding the remaining garam masala shortly before it promises to be ready. Then, remove from the heat, cover and allow to rest for a minute or so before taking to table with rice or warmed naan breads and desired condiments
Alternatives
Ironically, I only recently came back to this as a chicken-based recipe. Precisely because my personal reworking of Mrs Panday's recipe works so well as a vegan or veggie option, for many years, it was a go-to dish when cooking for plant-based friends. Sometimes I would do it with thick pieces of aubergine treated exactly as the chicken above, more often in a simplified version outlined below.
It's really easy:
Treat the marinade rather as a curry paste and add it to the browning onions (unless doing the version with marinaded aubergines)
Cook pretty much in the same manner—using vegetable stock, obviously—though I advise using thicker slices of onion and bigger mushrooms
Personally I think red Romano (also called pointed sweet red peppers) work better in the vegan version than white bell peppers. Nah, no rational explanation...
I have never done a pescatarian versions. I think it's because the combination of fish or seafood, mushrooms and mint seems odd. Then again, only those on Africa's Eastern Seaboard think chicken and mint is a "normal" combination. So let's just say "not yet" rather than "never".
Pairings
Yes, this is definitely a dish that works with both wine and beer, though I couldn't cite any particularly memorable wines with which I've remembered the pairing other than, oddly, a South African pinotage, notably a Simonsig Pinotage 2005 — I remember the wine and occasion specifically. It is one of those Cape reds that has both softness and the ballsy fruitiness to really work with this dish that is spicy and complex in its flavours.
But, on most occasions I've had this fantastic dish with your average supermarket plonk—red or white—or a cold beer, because I tend to cook it on "low maintenance" occasions or, indeed, I often have it with something as simple as chilled sparkling water.
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