Someone asked for a Indian curry that is flavoursome and can be enjoyed by people on a tight budget. Well, this is not it. This is a rich and decadent curry that is mild in flavour, but still enjoyable by seasoned curry lovers. There’s a lot of cashew nuts in the dish (250 grams or 1 cup) – to keep the price of ingredients down, then go with raw, unsalted, and slightly crushed cashew nuts from your Indian grocer – ours are about half the price of the ‘good looking’ cashew nuts.
Ingredients:
1/4 cup of cream (light whipping cream in the US)
250 grams of raw cashew nuts
2 onions, roughly chopped
500 grams of chicken, cut into 2 cm cubes
2 tomatoes, chopped
2 large cinnamon sticks
2 tsp smoked paprika (or chilli powder, if you want more punch)
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp salt (to taste)
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1cm of ginger (about 1 tsp) grated
50 grams of butter
Oil for frying
Method:
Start by frying your cashew nuts in half of the butter. You want a nice even colouring over all the nuts – it’s ok to let them get dark brown, but don’t let them get too black or they’ll taste ashy.
This is about right for us – a couple are overdone, so I picked them out (and ate them). Take the rest of the nuts out of the pan and set aside – keep the oils/butter in the pan (it’s all flavour!)
Add in the onions, garlic and ginger and fry with the remaining butter on a medium heat till the onions are translucent.
When translucent, add in your ground spices and salt. If the mixture gets too dry, add in a couple of tablespoons of oil and fry the spices together for 2-3 mins or until the oil separates.
Add in your chopped tomatoes and mix together. Let the tomatoes reduce in the spice mix. This should take a further 3-4 mins.
When your tomatoes are reduced, put the spice mix into a blender with half of your roasted cashew nuts.
Blend until it forms a thick puree
While the onions, tomatoes and cashew nuts are blending, fry your chicken in a hot pan with a couple of tablespoons of oil and the cinnamon sticks. Start to sear on all sides of the chicken pieces, but don’t overcook them!
Drop the temperature of your pan Pour back in your blended mixture and stir so all the chicken is covered. If your pan is too hot, your mixture will stick to the bottom – no big deal, just take the pan off the heat and mix the dried bits back into the dish.
When all the chicken is covered, pour in your cream and combine. Keep the temperature low, as you don’t want your cream to split.
Serve topped with the remaining cashew nuts, some sliced chilli and anything else that will make it look pretty (I’ve gone with some chopped spring onions – my coriander plant is still not surviving well!). Enjoy!
Whoa this was amazing 🙂 So rich and flavourful and definitely worth the splurge on cashew nuts. It was very thick (I like my curries thick – but this was SUPER thick), next time I think I might need to add more liquid- would water be the best choice, or more cream? Soooo delicious, thank you so much for sharing!
Definitely add a little more water if you like yours thinner – a lot of the texture will come from the cashews being crushed (and each cashew has a different texture depending on how much you roast it). Adding more cream will dull the flavour, too much, in my mind. But adding a bit of water as you’re pouring the blended mixture back into the pan will help keep it thinner 🙂
Great! I’ll give that a go next time! By the way, my husband just called me from work – he works nights in the military. He said that it is the best curry he’s ever had! Feel like I’m winning in the wife department tonight 😉 Cheers!
That’s so cool! Please thank him for his service 🙂
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Just made this curry. Wow, it’s amazing. We added about 1/2 cup of water, and it was still nice and thick 🙂
Definitely on my ‘cook again’ list!
Brilliant…very yummy.
OK, I substituted beef for chicken, coconut oil for butter, yoghurt for cream, and added a dash of chilli. A really really good curry
Hmm is this basically a lighter version of murgh makhani? Without khoya and having a lesser amount of cream?