If you’ve been in my kitchen lately, you’d know I’ve been all over the place in terms of dishes. From one night to the next, it’s a constant battle against falling back on the standby burgers and chips or Conecuh dogs. With the late summer harvest coming in and the variety of canned goods at my disposal, there’s no excuse to put something interesting together.
Recently, John and I revisited a beloved spot in Hoover—the Silver Coin. It’s an institution really, much like Taj India in Birmingham has been for years now. What is special about The Silver Coin is its inclusion of South Indian food. Well, really, what makes them special to me is a mix of kitschy early 2000’s decor and a constant stream of dog shows on the television. I don’t know who programs the television at The Silver Coin, but they are doing an excellent job.
As you can imagine, different regions in India have different dishes or approaches to dishes that overlap from region to region. You can find paper dosa in South India, or you can find a French crepe just about anywhere nowadays—that’s a good way to think about it. They also have something called uttapam, which is basically a loaded savory pancake. John calls it “Indian pizza,” if you need a more colloquial example.
If you’re at all familiar with Indian cuisine, the aroma alone is intoxicating. Sweet, bright, floral, spicy, every dish is a complex layering of flavors, loaded with spices. I always underestimate from one restaurant to the next how spicy a dish really is. If you’re at Sitar in Tuscaloosa and you see a dish listed as spicy, you best believe you’ll get your money’s worth in heat.
Yet, cooking Indian food seemed way above my pay grade. For one, it wasn’t until recently that you had to go to World Market or some other international supermarket to get even a fraction of the spices called for in any given recipe. Even the more anglicized dishes like chicken tikka masala still rely on a combination of spices quite unfamiliar, at least in name, to many Southern cooks.
However, I was eager to try my hand at a beloved restaurant dish—Chicken Jalfrezi. Unlike other curries, jalfrezi is a stir-fried dish that keeps the vegetables crisp, but has them drenched in a thick, spicy tomato sauce.
As John pointed out to me, it’s not just the amount of spices that go in to a given dish, but the when and how these spices are added matters just as much. For instance, like in this recipe, you’ll be asked to “bloom” spices by frying them in oil or clarified butter (known as ghee), to bring out their fragrance. Other spices you’ll add while things simmer, or stir fry. There’s some spices you don’t add until the very end, right before serving, hand-in-hand with the final pinches of salt every dish inevitably gets.
You may think, why not just dump it all in and see what happens? Well, you certainly could, but you wouldn’t be taking advantage of the individual qualities of each spice. Some things, like garam masala, are more of a delicate, aromatic blend that works better when simmered into something, whereas frying it could bring out some bitter, even soapy qualities.
If you’re wondering what garam masala is, I’m glad you asked. It’s a pretty even mix of cinnamon, clove, coriander, cumin, black pepper and nutmeg. I know that because the times we’ve made Indian food with what we could get at either Walmart or Foodvalu required us to mix up some of these spice blends ourselves.
I’d recommend this, especially since Walmart has more spices than ever before, including premade garam masala. However, buying all the individual spices, especially if they’re whole, allows you to blend as needed while maintaining the freshest spices. Plus, you’d be surprised how fun it can be to experiment with spice blends.
For instance, anytime I have a cookie recipe that calls for cinnamon, I always add some combination of my personal favorite “5-Spice Blend.” That’s an equal amount of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice. I’m quite partial to the smell of cloves and think they’re quite an underutilized spice, especially in pork recipes.
Why I’m harping on all this spice-blending is because it’s a very simple trick at any cook’s disposal to liven things up a bit. Roasting some vegetables? Toss them in some smoked paprika, cumin, coriander, salt and pepper, maybe some cayenne…and you’ll have a roasted vegetable with a fuller mouthfeel all of a sudden.
Grilling some chicken? Rub it with some dry mustard, garlic powder, onion powder, more smoked paprika, salt and pepper. Grill it, drizzle it with some lemon juice, serve it with some shredded basil and you’ve got something punchier than you’re normal salt and pepper protocol.
Chicken Jalfrezi
Marinade:
1.25 pounds boneless, skinless chicken, cut into bite-size pieces
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon Kashmiri red chili powder
For the rest:
2 Tablespoons neutral oil, like peanut or canola
3/4 cups onions, finely chopped
1/2 Tablespoon (1 inch) ginger grated
4 to 5 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon Kashmiri red chili powder
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 1/2 teaspoons coriander powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon sugar
3/4 cup tomato puree
2 Tablespoons ghee or butter
1 green chili or jalapeño, deseeded and diced
1 inch piece of ginger, julienned
1/2 cup onions, diced
1 1/2 cups bell pepper
1 Tablespoon soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce
Combine the chicken and marinade ingredients in a bowl, tossing to coat thoroughly. Let marinade for 15 to 20 minutes. If using fresh tomatoes, puree them before proceeding.
Heat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the oil, and once it is shiny, add the onions. Stir fry them for about 6 to 7 minutes, then add the ginger and garlic. Sauté for one minute. Add the chicken and stir fry for 3 to 4 minutes, until the chicken turns pale.
Stir in the chili powder, turmeric, garam masala, coriander and cumin powder. Pour over the tomato puree. Mix all together and let cook until oil begins to separate from the masala. Pour over up to a cup of hot water, til there is enough moisture to simmer. Mix well and cook covered until chicken is tender.
In a separate pan, heat the ghee, add the green chilies and ginger juliennes. When they begin to sizzle, add the bell peppers and onions. Stir fry for 2 to 4 minutes until slightly tender, but still crunchy.
When the chicken is cooked and the sauce is thickened, add the sugar and fried vegetables, along with any leftover ghee/butter in the pan. If there is excess liquid in the pan, you may cook on a high heat to help evaporate it off. Add the soy sauce. Stir well and cook for 1 to 2 minutes more. Taste, adjust seasoning as needed.
Remove from the heat and serve with fried white bread, jasmine rice, naan, or any flatbread.
A little restaurant trick if you’re using canned tomato puree is to either add two Tablespoons of tomato paste or an equal amount of ketchup to round out the tomato flavor. Fresh ginger is getting easier to come by, but the dried stuff will do in this application just as well, if needed. If you’re panicking because you don’t have Kashmiri red chili powder, just use your standard chili powder. You know, the one you only use for chili in the winter time.
Another bonus of procuring your own individual spices and cooking them in this way is you can adjust the spice level, meaning the heat. Cool it on the cumin, chili, and jalapeños if you want something that’s easier on your sensitive tastebuds.
The beauty of this kind of cuisine is there is already a built-in backup for vegetarians. You could do this with golden potatoes for a variation known as Aloo Jalfrezi. Pro-tip for the next time you find yourself in an Indian restaurant—all the dishes with “aloo” in the name are potato-based dishes. “Paneer” is cheese, I know that one, too.
At any rate, this one is a bit spicier than my usual fare, so be forewarned before pursuing this dish.
Out of all the recipes I’ve made from this part of the world, this is by far one of the more approachable ones, and more in the vein of those anglicized dishes, tailored to an American audience. Unsurprisingly, this dish is actually quite English in origin and remains popular in Britain, a holdover from its Victorian imperial conquests.
The stir frying that is used throughout the dish was meant to use up leftover meats and other vegetables during the reign of the British Raj.
As such, you’ll find this dish all over British and American Indian restaurants, but hardly anywhere in India proper. One such reason is that it’s considered taboo amongst Hindus to utilize leftovers. Yet, the true origins of Jalfrezi are still up for debate, with some suggestions pointing to the former governor of Bengal, Marcus Sandys, as the originator of the dish. Who knows?
Although, stir-frying has been used in Indian cuisine since the early 19th century when Chinese laborers brought the technique to the Assam tea plantations where they worked. As such, stir frying revolutionized the making of curries in Indian cuisine from then on.
Why use a neutral oil? Well, they can handle a high smoke point. Olive oil or even butter can burn at too high a temperature on its own, and you want to make sure you keep a high heat over everything to make sure it comes together quick.
Altogether, I’d say this meal took me at most 45 minutes to make, and that was just me waiting a full 20 minutes for the chicken to properly marinate. While it did that, I got all my vegetables and spices ready.
When using these many spices all at once, I find it useful to know what spices are getting grouped together, measuring them off, and putting them in a little teacup to have it all set to go. You do you, though.
If you’ve been stopped up like I have with all this late summer pollen and smog, this’ll clear you right up, as any curry should. If you still have your reservations, don’t worry, just take a trip down to The Silver Coin, watch a dog show, and let some more capable hands take care of dinner.
