Prepare to be transported.
Have you ever smelled or eaten something that instantly took you to another time or place?The scent of molasses mingling with spice, and you’re cutting out gingerbread in your grandmother’s kitchen. A bite of juicy sausage and tangy sauerkraut, and you’re back in Chelsea Market with your father, eating currywurst for the first time. Food memories are powerful.
Ginger Curried Chicken tastes like my childhood. It’s based on a dish called “Indian Chicken” that my father used to cook. He saved it for special occasions because he said it took a lot of extra prep (i.e. dredging and browning the chicken before baking instead of throwing it raw into the oven). Even as a small child, I loved the juicy tenderness of the chicken and the tangy sweet curry sauce that soaked into the rice. Years later, when I was jotting down ideas for this cookbook, I knew I needed a dish using these flavors.
Whenever I develop a recipe, I start by researching the dish’s history and the origin of its flavors. After studying several reference recipes, I decide what ingredients and approach I want to take in my own version. But when I stared researching this recipe, I ran into an immediate problem: I couldn’t figure out where the dish came from.
At the risk of sounding ridiculous (“Indian Chicken? That sounds clear enough”), let me explain. My father’s recipe included soy sauce and honey in addition to the traditional curry spices. But when I started searching recipes online, I couldn’t find any traditional Indian chicken dishes that included honey or soy. Most curries were finished with coconut milk and tomato. After an unproductive, frustrating hour of combing Indian recipe databases, I finally typed “Indian chicken with soy sauce and honey” into the search engine. And I hit gold:
In the form of a Food52 article by Annada Rathi entitled “The Sour, Spicy Fusion Food That's Wildly Popular in India (& Coming to a Kitchen Near You).” Skimming the article, I learned that my father’s recipe was actually part of the Indo-Chinese fusion cuisine that developed when Chinese migrant workers immigrated to East India. These immigrants married traditional Indian curry spices with ingredients they brought from home, such as soy sauce and hot sauce. My father’s chicken recipe was based on one of the resulting dishes: Chicken Manchurian. Soon I had all the reference recipes I needed.
When I ate my first bite of my Ginger Curried Chicken, I was instantly back at my father’s kitchen table in Indiana. But even as I swallowed that bite, I couldn’t help remembering the words of the Food52 article’s author, herself an immigrant from India:
“Imagine my shocking devastation, then, when I walked into a Chinese restaurant somewhere on the East Coast to find that neither the server, owner, nor chef had heard of any dish with “Manchurian” in the title . . . Soon I came to know that there were many Indians like me, who were feeling similarly disappointed, with another thing to add to the long list of what we missed about home.”
This dish is special to me because it recalls happy memories from my childhood. But for Annada Rathi and many other Indian immigrants, it represents a tiny piece of their heritage and recalls a whole way of life in another place. If that’s not powerful, I’m not sure what is.
Enjoy!
Ginger Curried Chicken with Caramelized Onions
(Serves 4)
1 pound chicken breasts, cut into two-bite pieces
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Diamond Crystal kosher salt and pepper
4 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
1 medium-sized onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 inch ginger root, grated
2 teaspoons ground turmeric
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon sriracha
1 ½ cup water
Special equipment: 8 x 8 baking dish.
Method
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
In a bowl, combine flour and cornstarch. Season with a three-finger pinch of salt and pepper (about a ¼ teaspoons should be about right). Dredge chicken pieces in the flour mixture. Make sure to reserve at least a tablespoon of the flour mixture after dredging the chicken.
Heat 3 tablespoons vegetable oil in a large skillet on medium heat. Add chicken and brown thoroughly on all sides. Remove to an oven-proof baking dish (an 8 x 8 square glass dish should be big enough).
To the skillet, add remaining tablespoon vegetable oil and heat over medium heat. Add the onion and two three-finger pinches of salt, and cook on medium heat until softened, about five minutes. Add the garlic and ginger and toss until fragrant. Add turmeric, cumin, coriander, and 1 tablespoon of the left-over flour mixture and toast until fragrant. Add the soy sauce, honey, sriracha, and water, and stir to combine.
Bring sauce to a boil and cook over medium-high heat until thickened. Pour the sauce over the chicken in the baking dish and cover loosely with aluminum foil.
Bake chicken in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for 10 minutes longer, or until cooked through and the sauce is caramelized and browned on top. Serve with rice.
Originally posted December 21, 2019.
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