A Chicken Pepper Fry served with a Buttered Mushroom and Saffron Pullao

This is a dish, as with so many others, inspired by something our Mother used to make when we were growing up. The word “Fry” in this context doesn’t necessarily indicate a dry, fried greasy sort of dish. It probably meant that less sauce or “gravy” was left at the end result. But we as kids did like a lot of gravy, so inevitably our pepper frys turned out with a thinner looser sauce.

When I asked my Mother about this dish, she said really the only ingredients should be (apart from the meat) onions, ginger garlic, potatoes and black pepper. But my Grandfather was in the habit of adding tumeric to it… and I quite like this to, so that’s what I’ve done.

The secret here, according to my Mother is to use lots and lots of onion. This transforms the dish into one with a delicious sweetness that compliments the peppery bite perfectly. So this is a recipe for 1 (largish) portion, and that’s pretty much double the amount of onion that I would use than for other similar currys.

Chicken on the bone is preferable here, since the bones help flavour the sauce with a lovely stocky flavour (and I also used fresh chicken stock to double the effect!).

I cooked most of the sauce away to get a dryer more concentrated flavour to the sauce, but leaving it thin is also an option. Sometimes a thinner sauce can be more fun if you have potatoes in the dish. You can mash them up to soak up the delicious gravy… 🙂

As with a lot of my cooking, I used some of what I had in the fridge at the time, hence the sliced green pepper, which turned out to add a lovely crunch to the dish at the end, when it was added raw and thinly sliced on top.

Ingredients:

• 3 chicken pieces
• 1 large onion
• 3-4 cloves garlic, sliced
• 1 small piece of ginger, sliced
• 1/2 tsp tumeric
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tbls cider vinegar
• 1 small potato, cubed
• sliced green peppers
• some chicken stock
• 1/2 lemon

Method:

Fry sliced onion until brown and caramelised, then add sliced ginger and garlic.

Add chicken pieces (in this case 1 drumstick, 1 thigh and 1 wing), and brown.

Add 1/2 tsp tumeric, 1/2 tsp black pepper powder, some salt.

Add 1 tblsp cider vinegar.

Add a chopped potato, and some water, cover and simmer.

When chicken is cooked, remove lid, add sliced green pepper and simmer open until desired consistency is reached.

Squeeze 1/2 fresh lemon and serve.