Recipe - Burmese Dry Chicken Curry

2 Onions; rough chopped
5 Cloves garlic; rough chopped
One half Inch piece fresh root
ginger, peeled and chopped
2 Sticks lemon grass; roughly
chopped
2 Red chillis seeded and
chopped (habaneros work
well, you'll need rather
more Thai chillis)
1 tablespoon Fish sauce (nam pla)
1 teaspoon Ground turmeric
4 tablespoon Veg oil
3 pound Chicken (preferably free
range) cut into curry
pieces* (skin on but you
can remove if preferred)
(up to 4)
4 Green (or two black)
cardamon pods
2 tablespoon Rough chopped
coriander/cilantro leaf
Salt and fresh ground black
pepper

(From Sophie Grigson's Meat Course, Network/BBC Books, London, 1995, ISBN:
0 563 37173 0, an excellent book for all sorts of meat cooking)

*Curry pieces: cut off both legs and thighs together taking as much meat as
possible from the carcass at the top of the thigh, separate legs and
thighs. Cut down along breast as far as wing at side of breast bone to
expose ribs, cut through ribs at top along length of breast bone, cut
through ribs at bottom of breast as far as wing, cut wing at joint with
body and remove breast and wing as one piece, cut into two approximately
one third along breast from wing.

Grind the first 7 ingredients (ie up to and including the turmeric)
together into a smooth paste (food processor/pestle and mortar etc). Heat
oil in wide frying pan or wok and add paste, stiryfry until moisture has
evaporated and paste has started to brown. Add chicken pieces and stir
well, scrape bottom of pan to prevent sticking. Cover tightly and simmer
for 3545 minutes there should be enough liquid given off from the
chicken during cooking but check now and then and stir. If chicken does get
too dry and starts sticking/burning (and it's never happened to me) add a
tablespoon or so of water and stir in, scraping residue off bottom of pan.

Shortly before chicken is ready slit open cardamom pods and extract seeds,
crush seeds in pestle and mortar and add to chicken with coriander leaf,
stir and simmer for a further minute or so, taste and adjust seasoning.

Serve with plain rice or coconut rice. Drink beer: Singha, Bintang or Tiger
beers are excellent, Pilsner Urquell is good too.

Ken Hom has a similar recipe but he omits the Nam Pla and adds 1 tbsp dry
sherry and two tbsp soy sauce just before the simmering which makes it much
more like a Straits Chinese or Nonna dish. Posted to CHILEHEADS DIGEST V4
#046 by Iain Noble inoble@hounddog.winuk.net on Jul 29, 1997