Elizabeth's Chicken Varuval (Dry Chicken)

Don't you feel for some comfort food on Sunday afternoons? I know I do its just something about Sunday when you feel like it would be sinful to eat anything from the can or anything simply prepared. When I was a little gal, Sunday was when we would have chicken or mutton or pork although in my aunty ally's place it was fixed..chicken was for Sundays and no one dared to mess with that schedule!!

So I thought today is good day for Elizabeth Fernandez' Chicken Varuval...one day over roti canai I cornered Aunty into teacing me the ropes for this dry dark brown chicken bits that are great on a hot day with a glass of beer too.

Ingredients:
-1 Chicken cut into very small pieces, washed and drained thoroughy - no water left.
-Big yellow onions about 3-4 sliced
-Big Jintan (Fennel) (2 tablespoons)
-Garlic (5-6 pips to grind with ginger)
-Ginger (a few thumb size piece, about 4 thumb sizes, add garlic, some water and blend well)
-Lots of good curry leaves
-Ghee or oil

Spices :
Cinnamon - about 3-4 broken into half
Cloves - about 6-7 pieces
Star anise - about 4-5, break it a bit.
Cardamon - about 3-4, smash it a bit
Depending on how hot you want the chicken, you will need about 4-6 table spoons of Plain Chilli Powder.
1/2 teaspoon of yellow powder
1 tbsp teaspoon of ground cumin powder

Method:

In a kuali, pour in ghee or oil (you will need lots of ghee or oil, bec this dish does not use any water so in order to ensure the meat doesn't urn you will be adding ghee and oil throughout the cooking process).
Once Oil/ghee is hot, put in the spices of cinnamon, cloves, star anise, cardamon and give it a quick stir, then quickly add the sliced onions, ground ginger/garlic and a good amount of curry leaves (try to break the curry leaves before putting it in). Nicely stir all this well and fry it till it smells aromatic, then add the jintan(fennel) and stir once again. Give less than 5 mins before you add in the chicken (make sure there is no water from the chicken and that the pieces are cut very small bec it will be hard to cook the meat if the pieces are big as there is no water).

Stir the chicken well and add how much of chilli powder you want with the cumin powder and yellow powder. From this point you will need to keep stirring and leave it to rest for 3-4 mins before stirring again and adding ghee or oil. Add salt after 10 mins and cook it this way until the chicken turns very dark brown (not till black though.)

Once it has reached the colour you like, taste it, if it is lacking taste as in salt, i would add some lime (big lime) juice or a dash of vinegar or some people give it a dash of thick dark soy sauce-very little though !!

Just before serving, add some more sliced onion (preferrably the yellow onion), curry leaves, big jintan, some chopped dry chilli, fresh green chillies (sliced in half) and more spices (if the dish is not spicy enough) and stir well and serve.

Note : You will have a very browned messy pot:-) Soak it over night with some dish soap and water. Don't use any expensive frying pan/pot for this dish.

It is a very dry dish so if having with rice, you may want to make "rasam" - which i did not dare make:-) I made sothi and 2 veggies. Enjoy.

Verdict :

We had a very satisfying lunch indeed.

P/S : Madam will be happy to note that this postings pictures were taken with a proper camera:-) So no more using dear hubby's handphone to post pictures here.

I do however need to figure out how to re-set the date function...its still stuck in 2004!!