Last Friday I was bit confused about what to make for dinner. I was looking for a dish that goes well with roti. I was running out of vegetables and found one chicken breast fillet left in my freezer. Generally Chinese and Thai dishes are best cooked with boneless chicken pieces. But I was not in a mood to prepare any of those. Then I stared to scroll down the pages of my diary where I write down my recipes and found the one of “Chicken Bhuna”. It is one of my earlier collected recipes which I prepared quite a long time back. I just gave it another try which turned out pretty satisfactory and led the way to have our dinner in a slight different way.

Ingredients to serve 4 :

1. Skinless chicken Brest fillet – 1 (approx. 250 gm.)
2. Onion (medium size) – 2
3. Ginger – 1 inch piece
4. Garlic – 3 to 4 cloves
5. Chopped green chilli – 2
6. Vinegar – 1½ tbspoon
7. Plain yogurt – 2 tbspoon
8. Turmeric powder – ½ teaspoon
9. Red chilli powder – ½ teaspoon
10. Garam masala powder – ½ teaspoon
11. Nutmeg powder – ½ teaspoon
12. Javitri or Mace powder – ¼ teaspoon
13. Chickpeas flour or Besan – ½ tbspoon
14. Sugar – ½ teaspoon
15. Salt to taste
16. Ghee – 2 tbspoon
17. Cooking oil – 2 tbspoon

Procedure :

Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces and marinate with vinegar for 3 – 4 hours.

Cut the onion into fine slices and grate the ginger and garlic.

Heat 2 tbspoon of ghee in a frying pan over medium heat and fry the onion, ginger and garlic till the onion slices turn gloden brown.

Make a smooth paste out of these fried onion, ginger and garlic in a blender.

Now in the same pan heat 2 tbspoon of cooking oil and then add the chicken pieces into it. With the help of a spatula break the chicken pieces into small fragments. Add turmeric powder and red chilli powder. Keep fragmenting the chicken.

As the water released form the chicken starts to dry up, add the onion-ginger-garlic paste, yogurt, sugar and salt. Mix them very well with the mashed chicken, put gas on low and let the mixture cook in covered condition.

As the mixture gets cooked fairly well, oil will start releasing from it. Now add chickpeas flour to absorb the excess oil.

Now put the gas off and add garam masala powder, nutmeg powder, mace powder and chopped green chillies and give it a good stir.

Put the lid of the pan and let it stand for few minutes.

Serve with roti, paratha or puri.

Note :

1. Always keep fragmenting the chicken until it turns mushy.
2. Don’t fry the chicken for a longer time otherwise it will turn hard.
3. Use of chickpeas flour is optional.