Mother's Day Chicken Wellington

Mother’s Day Chicken Wellington

Just sometimes, inspiration comes from strange places, like binge-watching food programmes on Youtube. Mother’s Day was looming in the near future and I thought that an intimate dinner at home would be in order, but I was at a loss for ideas. This is, until we watched an episode of Masterchef Australia. It was a pressure test of keeping up with the chef, none other than Jamie Oliver.  The contestants had to make a chicken wellington while keeping up with the chef.  What a blast!

Of course, I have the advantage of watching from the couch and was able to piece together the recipe afterwards, not having to cope with the unknown factor and associated stress of the competition.  This recipe seemed not too difficult and I was able to make my own adjustments in the process.  I have never cooked a beef wellington or any other pastry dish before, so the idea struck me as worthwhile.  We normally would have meat on the braai or a stewed dish of some description, mostly Southeast Asian dishes. We like the spices.  

This new idea was inspirational.  The dish was relatively easy to make, if somewhat messy in stuffing the chicken.  I made steamed courgettes and some carrots, and potato mash as side dishes. The leftover duxelles were added to the romain sauce to make a cheesy mushroom and onion sauce.  The vegetables were very lightly seasoned, as the sauce was quite salty. Ditto for the stuffed chicken breasts. 

The mash was finished to a more mushy consistency as opposed to drier, to set off the puff pastry of the wellingtons. Chicken breasts are notorious for cooking fast and becoming dry, which is an abomination.  The cooking time for the wellingtons may vary in accordance with your oven’s characteristics.  I made two wellingtons. This is enough for four portions; the puff pastry and stuffing adds a lot of bulk to the dish.

All in all, a worthwhile dish for a special occasion.

Ingredients

Mise en place

Enough for four portions

For the wellingtons

Two boneless chicken breasts

250 g store-bought puff pastry

1 egg for the egg-wash

Stuffing

Stuff properly

Three shallots, finely diced

250g of mushrooms, coarsely diced.  I used 150g of mixed exotic mushrooms and some Portabella mushrooms

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 cup dry white wine

For the sides

Four medium potatoes

250 g mixed courgettes

3 medium carrots

Go easy on the starchy veggies, there is a lot of pastry on the plate

For the sauce

A knob of butter 

1 dessertspoon all-purpose flour

3 teaspoons cream cheese

Leftover stuffing

Some salt and pepper to taste

Some butter and warm milk for the mash

Small sprig of parsley for the mash, finely diced

Method

Start with the duxelles and the chicken breasts. These need to cool down before assembly, so no rush. Lightly oil a pan on medium heat, add the diced shallots and sweat them down. Then add  the diced mushrooms and cook them down until almost dry. Add the wine and the thyme and reduce to a mushy consistency.  This is what gives the moisture for the wellingtons.

Remove the duxelles from the pan and set aside to cool. Add some more oil and a knob of butter to the pan and fry the chicken breasts until they have a slight brown outer.  They need to be underdone still, as they are going into the oven for twenty minutes to half an hour.  You certainly don’t want overcooked chicken. Remove from the pan and set them aside to cool.

Lightly brown the chicken

Switch on the oven to heat up. You need the oven at 180 degrees C.  To assemble the wellingtons, you are going to stuff the chicken breasts. Make a lengthwise slit in the thickness of the chicken breast to form a pocket.  This is the messy part. Stretch the pocket with your finger, taking care not to break the chicken breast. Stuff this pocket with the duxelles, making sure that the stuffing equals the amount of chicken meat. This is what will keep the chicken moist during cooking in the oven.

Divide the pastry into two squares. Use these for the wrapping of the chicken.  This is where you may let your imagination go wild. I folded the chicken in diaper fashion, not worrying too much about presentation. This is after all the Zietsman household, not a Masterchef competition entry.  Make sure that the pastry enfolds the chicken and is sealed properly. Scramble the egg and apply the wash to the upper of the pastry.  Pop these into the oven at 180 degrees C for 20 minutes. If the party looks a bit pale, bake for another 10-15 minutes, checking at 5 minute intervals for the right colour.

 

Now make the sauce while the wellingtons are baking. Start with a knob of butter and a dessert spoon of flour. Fry this on medium heat while stirring continuously, until the flour starts going darker, then you know that it is cooked properly.  Add warm milk a little at a time and keep on stirring.  The sauce will thicken as you stir. Add milk until you get the consistency that you want.  This is a very personal matter. Congratulations, you have just made a béchamel sauce.  Now add the cream cheese and stir until the sauce is just beginning to boil. Now you have a romain sauce. Add the leftover stuffing to the sauce to make a cheesy mushroom sauce. Adjust the consistency with warm milk.  You will notice that there is no salt in the sauce. The cream cheese I used has enough salt, but you may need some salt to taste.

The vegetables may be steamed, fried or baked. I only have one oven so baking them is out. I steamed them over the boiling potatoes.  Once these are done and the mash made, you can dish up. I added some finely chopped parsley to the mash.

Then set the table, open a bottle of wine and enjoy an intimate dinner.

Bon appetit.

Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last edited on 12 May 2025

Jewelled Rice and Tandoori Chicken

These two dishes together must surely be the epitome of a reasonably easy, but special course for a special occasion.

Recently, I had the chance of such an occasion, being Mother's Day. This also fell on the eve of a planned and long-outstanding knee-op for myself.  So Mother's Day offered a suitable opportunity to experiment in the kitchen, with my long suffering wife as the guinea pig.

In this instance the experiment was not eclectic in any way, as the preparation of either dish appeared to be reasonably simple, if involved.  And so it turned out to be.

The recipe started yet again with a brief search on the internet for jewelled rice recipes.  I eventually settled for ingredients which I had in hand or easily available.  Again, what struck me is that the eventual flavours are determined more by the process of preparation, than the ingredients themselves.

The rice part was completed by basmati rice.  As for the rest of the ingredients, I had to be somewhat more creative.  The nuts part were filled by some almonds and cashews.  The dried fruit contained raisins and dried cranberries.  I toyed with the idea of adding some fruit cake mix, but decided that doing so would be stretching my luck.  The carrots were coarsely julienned, the onions finely chopped.   The spice contingent was made up of cinnamon sticks, saffron, turmeric, some sugar and dried citrus peel. 



The dried citrus peel I made myself some time ago.  This is a very Cape Malay spice, widely used in sweet dishes.  This is made by drying citrus peel.  Especially the soft citrus peel, which does not have the bitter white inside of lemon and orange peel.  You dry the fresh peel in the microwave oven, taking care not to fry the fresh peel.  The dried peel is then blitzed in the blender or coffee grinder until the required fine-ness.  Very personal taste, I guess.  This dried powder may then be used in rice or any sweet dishes to enhance the flavour.  This Cape style food habit of drying fruit and making a pesto or paste for curries stems from the intermittent supply of suitable ingredients in the old days, giving rise to a whole fusion of culinary styles.  For which I am eternally grateful.



So here goes:

Jewelled Rice with Tandoori Chicken

Tandoori Chicken

6 Chicken drum sticks/thighs
250 ml plain or double cream yoghurt
1 tablespoon masala paste
Some salt

Jewelled Rice

3/4 cup basmati rice, soaked and rinsed
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, coarsely julienned
3 cinnamon sticks
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
pinch of saffron
4 green cardamom pods, whole
some sugar
1 tablespoon dried citrus powder
1/2 cup raw almond shavings
1/2 cup unsalted cashews
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup dried cranberries
some oil for cooking


Process

The chicken is thawed properly, then cut through the skin to allow the marinade to penetrate.  The marinade is the yoghurt, add some salt and add the masala paste.  The chicken is thoroughly bedaubed with the marinade and then left to marinate until the rice is done.  I cooked the chicken over medium coals on the griddle outside, while the rice was resting, before dishing up.   The chicken on the braai griddle was a culinary adventure on its own, providing suitable psychological torture to the rest of the neighbourhood.

The jewelled rice was a new adventure altogether.  I had these ghosts of past experiments in the back of my head, where I was confronted afterwards with bitter resentment of the many dirty dishes and a dirty kitchen.  Jewelled rice calls for several ingredients to be cooked and prepared before final assembly, so some thought about sequence are in order.  The nuts provide much more flavour when they are freshly roasted, so this happens first.  The nuts were ground coarsely in a mortar and pestle, then roasted in a dry pan until they started to caramelise, then set aside until cooled.

The cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods were fried in a lightly oiled pan until the flavours come out, then the carrots added.  To this lot I added some sugar and the dried citrus peel and fried until the sugar caramelised, then came the dried fruit.  This was also set aside as soon as the dried fruit and citrus peel started to show flavours.

The rice was soaked and rinsed during all this preparation.  The next thing was to start the final assembly of the dish.  The onions were fried until they started to caramelise, after which I added the turmeric.  This was fried until the turmeric was taken up by the onions, about fifteen seconds or so.  The soaked and rinsed rice went in next to pick up some of the flavours.  While this was going on, the pinch of saffron got ground along with some sugar in the mortar and pestle, then boiling water added to steep the flavours out.

As soon as the rice was sufficiently fried to my taste, I added some boiling water to the pan and started the dish in pulao style.  I deemed this an appropriate way of getting flavours into the rice.  Once the first dollop of water was absorbed, the saffron water went in.  Check for salt.  Add some water as the rice dictates, little by little.  When the rice is almost cooked, the carrots, raisins and nuts are added.  Then no more water goes into the pan.  The lid goes on the pan and the burner turned low for a few minutes, then off.  This dish has to go fluffy with the steam inside.

While this went on, I started a fire and cooked the chicken outside. 

Then we had dinner.

Having read a lot about the Persian style dishes and their sweetness, I had some idea of what to expect.  However, my wildest dreams could not reach the flavour profiles we experienced during this meal.  The chicken provides a salty but soft angle, while the saffron and the cardamom puts the rice in a different category altogether.

A recipe to keep. For sure.

Bon appetit!




Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2019-05-19

Soul Food on A Cool Night: Chicken Korma

I had the privilege recently of  having a long discussion about good food. Almost as good as eating the same.

This time around it was a lively discussion around food on board. A passion of mine. The company consisted of myself and a bunch of sailors from India, no less. These sailors were asking questions about food on board and provisioning. This after they had just completed the Cape to Rio Yacht race and brought the boat back via the notorious southern Atlantic ocean. A feat not to be sneezed at.

After some time, during the discussion, I came to the realisation that they sailed the boat from India to Cape Town, then participated in the Cape to Rio race, then sailed the boat back to Cape Town, all without a refrigerator on board. Around ten thousand nautical miles across the sea. Now they have to sail the boat back to India. Another voyage of around thirty-five days at sea, non-stop. It took a moment or two for me to realise the enormity of the provisioning problems on hand. A very interesting exchange of ideas, especially for a relative novice like me.

The conversation went around dried meat and other dried provisions, pickling of fish, baking bread and growing sprouts, amongst other things.

Of course, then we got hungry from the talk and the topic morphed to recipes. Why am I not surprised?

We discussed at length the merits of the various spices and their uses, and then I struck gold. We exchanged recipes.

Chicken korma. One of my favourite recipes. No heavy spice, just an explosion of aromas and flavours. And the weather here in Cape Town has taken a turn to cool. Opportunity, indeed!

I have made this dish several times before. All very tasty. This time around I got some proper info on what the locals do in India. My own interpretations appear to be but a watered down version of what the dish should be.

This dish is soul food par excellence. And one has to prepare it with passion. Otherwise just go and get a take-away sandwich. The dish is simple to make, with some preparation required. Nothing onerous. The preparation is where the passion comes in. The flavours all comes with the preparation and process. Simple spices, commonly available.


The first rule for this dish is to roast the whole spices, including the almonds, then grind them to a powder before use. Roast them separately, as the grain sizes differ and therefore the roasting time will differ.

Then fry the onions before taking the blender to them. Along with the roasted almonds. This time, after my discussion with the intrepid Indian sailors, I used coconut cream instead of water. The dish needs a very thick onion sauce to cook the chicken.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning. Ingredients first.

Chicken Korma with coconut cream

Ingredients

600 g chicken breast fillets
2 large or 3 medium onions, chopped coarsely
1 cup yoghurt
½ cup almond slivers
2 cups coconut cream (1 can)
2 tsp coriander seeds (Whole dhania)
2 tsp cumin seeds (Whole jeera)
1 tsp whole jeera (Another, keep separately)
1 tsp black mustard seeds
¼ tsp asafoetida (hing)
2 tsp turmeric
5 green chillies, finely chopped
3 cinnamon sticks
1 ½ tsp freshly ground garlic
1 tsp freshly ground ginger
1 tsp red chilli powder. (Cayenne pepper will work for the South Africans)
salt
some water
some butter, ghee or cooking oil
some coriander leaves for garnish
basmati rice

Process

Cut the chicken into thumb size bites and marinade in the yogurt with the turmeric and red chilli powder. Leave for 30 minutes while you prepare the sauce and the dry spices.

Roast the mustard-, coriander- and cumin seeds separately in a dry pan, then grind it all to a fine powder. Add the hing.  Roast the almond slivers. Keep the almond separate from the rest of the spices. All this effort is what will determine the eventual flavour, so take care. And this is the bulk of your effort, the rest is a no-brainer.

Fry the onions and cinnamon sticks in the butter until the onions turn brown, then add the fresh chillies, garlic and ginger. Fry these for another 30 seconds, then add the almonds. Add the coconut milk, then blend the onion, almond and spice mix to a thick sludge. If the sludge is too thick, add a little water. You need a thick sauce for this dish.

Bring this lot to a slow boil, then add the ground spices to the sauce. Mix through, then add the marinade with the chicken. Add salt to taste. Turn the heat down so that the dish only just bubbles. Now add the raw cumin seeds.

Cook until the chicken is done.

In the meantime, soak the rice and cook as per instructions.

Dish up with some fresh coriander leaves as garnish.

And be careful, there are a lot of sensual flavours that creep out of this dish and through your soul. And you may have made too little food...




Bon appetit!


Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2017-03-06

Pakistani Style Biriyani

Biriyani must be the most the most underrated dish in the culinary world. Here in South Africa you even get it in cans, if you look in the right place. Very common over the whole of Asia, it appears.

It is very easy to make. Perhaps that is where the idea comes from that it is a commonplace dish and therefore treated with disdain.

However, there is much variation to this dish. You can make it in a multitude of flavours, ranging from mild to strong. You can actually make the meaty part very strongly spiced as the rice part will dilute the strength somewhat.

But the appeal of this dish lies in the gentle flavours it carries. If you intend to use saffron, it is sacrilege to make it too spicy. The spiciness will overpower the exotic flavour of the saffron and it will turn out to be just another spicy rice dish.

Biriyani is made in two parts, then assembled and steamed. Cook the rice and cook the meaty part. And the exotic flavour lies in the preparation of the meaty part. Especially the process.

The meat is marinated in a spiced yoghurt marinade. Fresh herbs make a huge difference to the end result. I used fresh coriander leaves. The rest of the herbs and spices are the normal ground spices available through your local supermarket or spice shop. Whatever you do, try your utmost to get hold of fresh herbs and spices. It really makes a difference.

For this version I decided to broadly go along with the basic recipe from my food blogger friend Maria Nasir. She lives in Lahore, Pakistan and makes the most heavenly food in her kitchen. Pakistani food is quite spiced, but not strong. They focus on flavours over there. You can find Maria's recipes at her Foodaholic web site. Well worth the visit.

Of course, the Hungry Sailor will impart his own ideas on the basic dish. Just because I live in a different part of the world and simply cannot get hold of the same spices as in Pakistan. But also just because  the Hungry Sailor is in a creative mode.

Perhaps also because I am a bit of a pirate at heart. There is a saying in sailing circles that you should always  be yourself, except when you can be a pirate. Then always be a pirate. Very tongue in cheek, but quite uplifting. So I decided to do the pirate thing.

I used Maria's recipe as input to my dish. You  need to marinate the chicken, no arguments about that. Use lemon juice to cut the heat if too spicy. I used lemon as garnish only, This dish does not normally come out spicy.

You will need quite a large casserole with a lid to make this dish. As it is a rice dish, the rice needs to be fluffy and loose. You steam it slowly to obtain the final flavours.

So here goes.

The marinade ingredients 

Ingredients

1 kg chicken. I used a barbecue pack with loose pieces.
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 dessert spoon level masala paste. (Get a recipe here)
1 teaspoon turmeric
250 ml plain yogurt
Some coriander leaves, chopped
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon heaped masala powder

This is a chunky version

8 medium tomatoes, coarsely chopped
pinch of saffron stalks, soaked in ½ cup of boiling water
salt
pepper
2 star aniseed
3 cinnamon sticks
some butter for frying
1½ cup raw basmati rice
½ cup raw lentils
some butter for frying

Process

Marinade

Chop some of the coriander leaves and mix with the yogurt. Add the turmeric, some salt, masala powder and cumin. Mix thoroughly. Add the chicken and marinade for at least half an hour. I removed the skin from the breast and thighs. Cut the chicken into manageable pieces. I find that the marinade does nor penetrate the skin, so I remove chicken skin as far as is sensible. Cut the breast pieces into double thumb sized chunks. This dish is chunky.

After the meat has been properly marinated, start the cooking. As usual, we start by frying the onions in the butter until at least translucent, but preferably caramelized. Add the garlic at the end, frying it for about fifteen to twenty seconds. Then add the meat. You don't need all the marinade, so chuck it. It will clutter your final dish and make it soggy.

Main dish

In the mean time, cook the rice and lentils on the side.

Fry the meat until it is well cooked, then add the chopped tomatoes.  Add the cinnamon sticks and aniseed at this stage. Turn the heat down to minimum and simmer for at least twenty minutes. The juices need to cook away a bit and the resulting masala needs to be on the dry side. Watch out for burning, you don't want that, it will make the dish bitter and you start over.

The last part of the masala coming along nicely

Remove the meat and masala from the pot and keep warm on the side. You will now start to build the final biriyani.

Building the final dish

Put  a layer of rice in the bottom of the pot, then add some of the meat and masala. Cover this with another layer of rice and add the rest of the meat part. Don't add the mushy gravy part, your biriyani will come out soggy. Cover the last meat layer with the last of the rice and lentils. Garnish this with some lemon slices and some coriander leaves. Add the saffron tea to the dish now, cover and simmer at the lowest heat for at least twenty minutes. Then switch off the heat and let the dish rest for another twenty minutes to develop flavour.


Mix everything up before dishing up. Add salt as required. This dish has a very subtle set of flavours, so perhaps it is not a good idea to pair this with a heavy red wine. In Pakistan this is served with a raita, a sauce made of yogurt and spices.

Bon appetit!



Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2014-09-21

Paella En El Estilo Del Momento

Paella in the style of the moment. This is hopefully a proper translation.

Having been at sea for two solid months with lots of cooking, I took a rest. But recently I felt the urge for being creative again. Summer is almost here and my paella pan is hanging on the wall, gathering dust, not having been used much as a result of my seafaring activities. This is a good pointer to a stir-fried dish or a paella.


After some deliberation the choice fell on a paella. But the pan is too big to make a dish for two people. No problem. I have friends. So, after a phone call or two a dinner date was arranged. Ten guests. Thanks to my friends Tony and Marjo, I had a venue, the ingredients and guests to boot!

What remained was to think up something new.

A paella is very easy to make, but I was looking for a new way of doing things. Perhaps in the preparation. An eclectic mix of ingredients do not tickle my fancy. Paella is supposed to be a simple, almost rustic dish. Not complicated.

The answer was lurking in the process. How do I get more flavour in the dish without using external chemical means. Read spicy mixes. The idea came to me from methods more often used in making stews. You can add stock from external sources, but it seemed more fun to use the stock already in the pan.

This line of reasoning led to a sequence of frying the ingredients that would leave some caramelised  residue in the pan to be soaked up by the sauces later, before the dish gets too dry. Very much like making a stew or a risotto. Most of the stock is created by frying the ingredients itself.

The choice of the day fell on a mixed paella, easy to make and open to experimentation. The only caveat is not to burn the ingredients, because then you start over.

This recipe is well known in the paella world, being mostly chicken, with a spruce-up of prawns and mussels making it a mixed paella. I decided to go with turmeric and saffron, instead of a smoked paprika. The chourizo sausages in the dish would provide sufficient smokiness to the overall flavour. I also used proper Spanish short grain rice. There is a slight difference in flavour to the long grain rice and the dish also tends to be a bit drier than when using long grain rice. Which makes it a paella as opposed to a risotto, I guess.

In the end I used some additional chicken stock. Use the best you can get with the least chemical content. The spring onions are chopped into thumb size lengths as garnish with the peas. The green, leafy part of the stems are chopped up finely as garnish with the coriander leaves. A paella needs to be done using olive oil. Olive oil will add to the authentic taste. But you may use any vegetable oil, they all are suitable.

This dish is enough for ten to fifteen people. I used my 42cm /16 ½ inch paella pan obtainable in South Africa from Perfect Paella in Cape Town. I am pretty sure that this type of pan is reasonably available all over the world.

Ingredients

1 kg short grain rice
2,5 kg chicken breast fillets, cubed and dried
2 chourizo sausages, they are about 150-200mm long (6-8”), sliced finely.
1 kg blanched prawn tails
500 g shelled mussels
3 medium onions
3 medium tomatoes, chopped coarsely
2 hot Thai chillies, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, mashed
1 teaspoon coriander seeds, crushed
4 spring onions for garnish
1/ cup of fresh coriander leaves, chopped coarsely for garnish
2 cups frozen peas
1 ½ teaspoon turmeric
6 saffron stalks in a cup of boiling water
2 teaspoons freshly ground pepper
some salt to taste
1 l chicken stock
400ml dry white wine
Some olive oil for frying

Process

Make sure the chicken cubes are quite dry. Start by frying the chourizo sausages in the pan with some oil. Once these are done to a nice brown colour, remove them from the pan and fry the chicken cubes. Do it in batches, otherwise you tend to get lots of fluid, in which case you are boiling the meat, not frying it. I had to bail the pan twice to get rid of all the chicken juice. I kept this with the stock for use later. When the chicken is done, remove it all and keep warm.

Then start the onions. Once the onions are getting to a nice brown colour, add the chilies, coriander seeds and garlic. Fry these for thirty seconds, then add the chopped tomato. Once these are all going nicely, add the rice. The caramelised bits will have come off the bottom of the pan and into the sauces.


Fry the rice for a while to take up the flavours, then add the wine. Cook the lot until the wine reduces, somewhat, then add chicken stock a little bit at a time. Make sure the dish doesn't burn. After the chicken stock you add water as required until the rice has swollen enough to be almost edible. The add the prawns and the mussels. They don't need much cooking. Stir the dish to ensure that nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan. Add the saffron, pepper and turmeric at this stage. Keep adding water as required, keeping the dish only just fluid.

Add the chicken and chourizo back to the dish. Test for saltiness, the dish may be too fresh still.

Add the chopped spring onions and the peas just before the dish is done. Allow the dish to rest for ten to fifteen minutes. Add the coriander and spring onion leaves as garnish. Arrange it artistically, your friends would love it. I cut some rings from a red bell pepper as further garnish.


Then dish up. This dish goes very well with a dry white wine.

Bon appetit!


Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2014-09-12

Korma Curry, Boat Style

 

I have often thought about the difference between what I do versus your standard urban food blogger, cooking in his or her five star kitchen. Complete with all the electricity and associated equipment. I have also thought at length about what I call in Afrikaans “afskeepkos”. Food made in negligence. I have gone so far as to post (or is it “pose”?) the question on my FaceBook wall, with some reaction.

The answer is not easy to find, as the term “afskeepkos” is a neologism, even in Afrikaans.

The proper answer needs to be researched and pondered, if you will.

The gist lies in the application of the mind in preparing food. Whatever food it is. Leftovers may look and taste like, well, leftovers. Or you can apply your mind and use those same leftovers in an altogether new dish.

Or you can use some of the stuff that you munch on before dinner as part of the dinner dish ingredients.

We are not here to discuss the vagaries of language and application of the mind, we need to cook up something simple for dinner on board. Using two pots and one burner. Perhaps this one will go down in history as having applied the mind.

Chicken Korma is one of the more well-known dishes in India. It is made with onions and cashews, along with the requisite spices. And it is extremely simple to make. If this dish takes more than fifteen minutes in preparation, you are doing something wrong.

The nominal recipe is to use the ingredients in the list below. There are a myriad variations and even my own version differs between batches. But they all taste exquisite.

This one is normally made in the kitchen at home, where you have access to a stick blender or equivalent. Aboard a small yacht there is none of that, hence this adaptation.

Ingredients

For the chicken

500 g (1 lb) de-boned chicken.
3 medium sized onions. More is better for this dish.
½ cup whole cashew nuts. Or one whole cup, but then the dish becomes very rich.
1 clove fresh garlic
1 fresh hot chilli
½ teaspoon coriander seeds
½ teaspoon fenugreek seeds
5 black peppercorns
1 cardamom pod, shedded
1½ teaspoon medium masala powder
½ teaspoon turmeric powder
½ teaspoon mustard seeds
Small stick cinnamon bark
1/4 teaspoon aniseed seeds.

Or combination of the above. The chillies, garlic, onions and cashews are not negotiable.

1 teaspoon green masala paste (recipe here)
1 teaspoon garum masala
bunch of fresh coriander leaves, chopped
spritz of fresh chives, chopped
some salt to taste
2 tablespoons butter

For the rotis

½ cup white or brown bread flour. I used brown bread flour
½ inch slice of a brick of butter
pinch of salt
¾ cup lukewarm water

Process

For the Chicken Korma

Fry the cashews in a dry pan until they are nice and brown. It works better if you have a cast iron saucepan or pot, because the pot heats the food from the side as well. The heat retention also helps with the rest period at the end. I used my 20cm Le Creuset saucepan for this.

Take them out and crush them as fine as you can get it. I used a coffee mug and the back ends of my kitchen knives. Keep the crushed cashews to one side. Add a dollop of butter to the pan and fry the dried whole spices until the flavour comes out. I use my mortar and pestle to grind the whole spices a little before frying them.

Add the grated onions and fry until they are nice and translucent, beginning to turn brown. This may be difficult as the onions will be very watery because you grated them. Add the chopped fresh chilli and and garlic and fry for another two minutes, then add the dry powder spices. I crushed the cashews while frying the onions to save time by multiplexing. Fry for another minute, then take it off the heat. Add the crushed cashews and a little water to make a batter-like sauce. Then put it back on the heat and bring to the boil.

In the home version you chop the onions coarsely, then fry them until they are brown. The spices are added as above. When everything is ready, the fried whole cashews are added back to the mix and blitzed with a stick blender to make the sauce, adding water as required.

The sauce can be quite thick, leading to burning if careless, so watch it. Add a little water if you get worried.

Now add the chicken. I cut the chicken into thickish slices, as opposed to cubes. They cook faster if they are thinner. Cook slowly until the chicken is tender. Add salt as required. Make sure you don't use too much water. The dish needs to be almost just runny when done. If it is too watery it becomes a mess to eat and most of the flavourful parts get left in your plate. When the dish is nicely done, add the garum masala, the chopped coriander (dhania), and the chopped chives. Put the lid on and set this lot aside to rest.

For the Rotis

This was one of my more successful experiments. The internet is a wonderful place if you understand that different folks have different names for the same stuff. Like rotis. Some call them flat breads, others call similar bread tortillas, even though they may not be made from corn flour.

Whatever the case, I used an idea from a recipe for tortillas. You rub the butter into the flour and add the salt to the warm water. Then add the water little by little to the flour making a very soft dough. This dough will be nice and elastic for only a short time, so work diligently. Knead the dough for five minutes until it becomes satiny. Then roll it into a long sausage about two inches thick (50mm). Cut this into 50mm sections to make small balls.

Roll each ball out into a small disk about 4mm thick. Bake in a dry pan on medium heat until it starts to puff, then turn over. You will know that it is done when it starts to burn in spots. You get a production line going, baking one at a time and rolling the next one while you wait. I used my 24 cm non stick frying pan from Le Creuset, it works a charm.


In the meantime, the main dish is resting and developing flavour. Don't worry. If you used a cast iron saucepan it will not even cool down to edible levels while you are making the rotis. Else heat it a little as required.

You can dish up straight from the saucepan at the table. Two rotis per person is more than enough, there will be leftovers.
And it is accepted practice to use the rotis to wipe out your plate.

Bon appetit!

Authored by Johan Zietsman
Last updated on 2013-07-06