There is a Bengali dish called posto chicken. Kainaz used to make it when we were newly wed and she used to download recipes from the net.
I didn’t know the recipe but got this idea while making the marinade for posto ilish last night.
I won’t be able to give you the exact proportions as I had a vague idea of where I wanted to go with it and briefed our maid and my sous chef, Banu, over the phone from work. Banu normally calls me up for instructions for what to cook.
Here’s what I told her (translated to English from my broken Hindi)
- Fry green elaich (cardamom) in a bit of oil
- Add one finely chopped onion and fry
- Add half a finely chopped tomato, four split green chillies, curry leaves and fry
- Add 4 tablespoons of crushed posto (poppy seeds, khus khus) and stir
- Beat 100 g of ready made curd and add to this
- Add 4 chicken drumsticks
- Add half a teaspoon each of turmeric and black pepper powder and a table spoon of salt
- Cook, cool, put in fridge
It tasted really nice when I heated it for dinner. I made an interesting garnish of curry leaves, tomato bits and sliced raw ginger and this brought the dish alive.
Went well with the lovely rotis that Banu makes.
Note: I’ve started a mini food riot on blogger and facebook. Clarification, Bongs don’t use curry leaves. It’s the Bombay inlfuence on me. Coriander leaves would be more Bengali 🙂
