THE ACCIDENTAL INDIAN...

In the name of Good Friday, I decided to be, well, good and all and stay in. Of course, by about 7pm, I needed some kind of project to distract me from the SMS-vites to head out, so I decided to try and make something my Mum used to make every now and then - Sindhi chicken pilaf. Real comfort food. But, erm, Problem 1: I had never made it before; Problem 2: I had never paid proper attention to Mum making it; Problem 3: I had no recipe for it and couldn't reach Mum; Problem 4: Google was not cooperating - it had heaps of recipes which called for some ingredients I didn't have in the fridge, like yoghurt. Besides, all of them were stove top recipes, and I distinctly remember Mum quite effectively making the pilaf in the rice cooker. What I did have was most of the ingredients in a simple stove-top recipe for fish pilaf from Poonam Vaswani's A Spoonful of Sindhi (which you can pick up at stores like MPH. The recipes are simple and pretty easy to follow, which is great, I'd recommend it). So I did the next best thing, I made the rest up, adding a couple of ingredients here and there, changing some of the proportions, and praying it worked out. Its not very purist, so Mum, if I have this completely wrong, I'm sorry! Either way, both victims of my little experiment gave it two thumbs up, polished it off, and feel perfectly fine today, heh, so I think it might be worth sharing. Hope it works as well for you if you decide to try it. Ingredients 2 - 3 Chicken breasts, chopped into bite sized pieces 2 - 3 Red onions, chopped (Yellow onions are fine too) 2 Green chillies, chopped 3 Tomatos, chopped 1 inch Ginger, chopped 2 Garlic cloves 1/2 - 1 tsp Garam masala (NB: I didn't wanna use Garam masala, and opted for fresh spices instead. It was a bit of guesswork, but seemed to work. I used: 1/2 Cinammon stick 1/4 tsp Coriander seeds 1 Bay leaf 2 Cloves Black pepper) 1 tsp Chicken masala 1 tsp Coriander powder 1/2 tsp Cumin powder (which I replaced with 1 tsp of Cumin seeds instead, coz I ran out of the powder) 1 tsp Chilli powder (less if you don't want so much of an edge) Salt to taste Olive oil 2 cups Basmati rice Coriander leaves, chopped. Using a medium size pot, heat the oil and fry the onions till they brown. Add the spices. Add the tomatos and green chillies, garlic and ginger, salt. keep stir frying. Add the chicken pieces and fry a little bit to seal in the flavour. Add a cupful of water and simmer for a couple of minutes. Remove from heat. Wash two cups of rice, put in the rice cooker. Add the chicken mixture and mix well. Add about two more cups of water. Cook. (Some people like sultanas and nuts etc in pilaf as well, and I'm guessing it would be at the rice cooker stage that they would logically go in. I, however, hate sultanas, so I never had to try and figure that out.) When serving, sprinkle the coriander leaves on top (lovely suggestion on Ms Vaswani's part, really brings out the flavours). Enjoy. The whole thing takes under 40 minutes and apart from the bit of time that goes into the chicken, it's really simple, since the rice cooker takes care of the rest. Cheers, Art