Cashewnut Chicken Curry

Chicken curry with yogurt and cashew nuts. (Photographs by Sebastian John)

When I returned from India, I brought some unsalted roasted cashew nuts. Last week when I fried some of those and added to a chicken dish my friend liked it a lot. So I started looking for cashew chicken recipes, but came across a variety of versions. I was not sure what was what, and most seemed to have a long list of spices. Off late I have been trying to cook with a shorter list of spices, and extract more flavors from the main ingredients itself.

I then checked a Kerala cookbook I had, to see if Keralites cooked chicken with cashews. When I lived in the state I don’t remember ever eating a chicken curry with cashews that claimed to be indigenous origin. But lo and behold,  there it was -  “Chicken Curry with Curd and Cashewnut” (Kasuandiparippum Thairum Chertha Kozhi Kari). According to the book “The Essential Kerala Cookbook” by Vijayan Kannampilly, the dish is of Muslim origin. What amazed me was the extremely short list of spices.  Then I remembered – for all its spice connections, traditional Keralite cooking incorporates a shorter list of spices than most Indian cuisines.

This dish was cooked based on the ingredients mentioned in the book. Some of the ingredients have been modified based on the availability and size of produce in the US. It turned to be a delicately flavored dish. I served with rice spiced with cumin. The dish also can be served with porottas or other Indian flatbreads.

Stir-fried Okra

Stir fried okra. (Photographs by Sebastian John)

Okra is one my favorite vegetables (I think botanically okra is a fruit.) I like okra so much that when I was in boarding school, my friend and I once nearly wiped out a huge okra patch our school manager had planted. We would pluck the tender okra off the plant throughout the day, and eat like french fries. We were finally “apprehended”, but were let go on grounds that at least we were eating healthy food.

Okra can be a very “sticky” vegetable to cook. If not handled well, the dish can be very gummy and slimy. Which was one of the prime reasons why my wife didn’t like okra till she came to India. On the other hand if okra is cooked in lot of oil (which I have seen in certain parts of India), the dish becomes very heavy on the palate.

Picking good okra is also key to make a good dish. Mature okra can be very tough and fibrous. Young okra, about two-three inches in length, emerald green in color and minimal spine are the best ones. There are two tricks to know if okra is good -

Cookwares and Seasoning

French copper saute pans. (Photographs by Sebastian John)

I have slacked on cooking in the last two months because of my travel schedules and moving to a new place. But that did not stop me from picking up some good pots and pans. For nearly three years we had been operating with a motley of mix and match cookware – couple of sauce pans, one stock pot, pressure cooker, and two identical 12-inch anodoized frying pans. Most of our cookware were gifts or random stuff we had bought. We always wanted to get better cookware, but it never happened for a variety of reasons. Ever since I started blogging we began thinking of getting better cookware. I turned my attention to seconds sales and clearances.

It was at a seconds store that I first spotted the French copper saute pans  in the summer of 2009. The discounted prices were still beyond our budget. So I asked the sales counter staff for a possible discount. My plea was turned down and I left. One month later I walked into the store, and the pots were still there, with the prices down a notch, but still high for us. I kept on checking the store, each time praying that the pans were still there, and hopefully with further markdowns. This exercise lasted through November.