Chicken karahi

Before you start

• the widest heavy pan you own
• everything cut before the heat goes on — this is a fast dish

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 400gchicken thighs — on the bone, cut small — the bone is where a karahi gets its body
• 70gwholemeal atta
• 1½ tbspghee
• 4tomatoes
• 1 thumbginger
• 6garlic cloves
• 4green chillies
• 2 tspcumin and coriander seeds
• 1 tspblack peppercorns
• 1 handfulcoriander

Method

6 steps

1. chop · 8m

   Chicken into small pieces on the bone, tomatoes quartered, ginger into matchsticks with half of them held back for the top.

2. fry · 10m

   Garlic into hot ghee for seconds only, then the chicken over the fiercest heat, moved constantly until it has taken colour everywhere.

3. simmer · 16m

   Tomatoes in as they are and left to collapse on their own. No water and no onion go into this pan — a karahi has neither, and adding either turns it quietly into a different curry.

4. fry · 8m

   Heat back up at the end and the liquid driven off until the ghee separates and sits clear on the surface. Chicken cooked through: nothing pink at the bone, juices clear.

5. grill · 12m

   Rotis rolled thin onto a dry hot tawa, thirty seconds a side, then straight onto the flame so they balloon.

6. finish · 3m

   Peppercorns crushed coarse over the top with the reserved ginger, green chilli and coriander, and to the table in the pan it cooked in.