Chettinad Chicken, Tarka Dal & Coriander Rice

The Beauty of this meal is that the chicken requires no lengthy or overnight marinades, yet still packs a wallop of flavour!
Both the Chicken and the Tarka Dal come from Rick Stein's India; the Lila Dhania Baath comes from Prashad and should be familiar by now to anyone who has cooked anything on this blog, as I usually make it with everything!
Assuming you have some staples at the ready (such as the masala for the rice) this is a great one for a weekday evening meal and you won't be eating at midnight!
Read through the recipes before you start noting the timings so everything is ready at the same time if you are doing all three dishes - you start with the Dal, the rice and chicken starts at around the same time (the rice can remain resting for as long as you like after its finished), and finally its the tarka for the dal which is done as the chicken is in its final phase.

Chettinad Chicken

There's another interesting ingredient addition here: dagarful (a.k.a Kalpasi or stone flower), which is a lichen. You can get it online or, as I have done here, simply use more cinnamon

Spice blend ingredients:
1 tbsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp Kashmiri chilli powder

Chicken ingredients:
50ml or so sunflower oil
1 tsp fennel seeds
cinnamon stick - circa 8 cm (or 5cm cinnamon and 1 tbsp roughly chopped dagarful)
150g shallots, diced
Handful curry leaves (if you don't have fresh, try some curry leaf powder like I did - seems much more effective than dried curry leaves - I used a heaped teaspoon or so)
Skinless chicken - about 700g - cubed
4 or 5 cloves of garlic, crushed
4 cm or so root ginger, grated or crushed
1 tsp sugar/ jaggery/ palm sugar
1 tsp salt
100ml water (plus extra if required)

Method:
Spice blend: put all the ingredients in a spice grinder or mortar and create a powder.
Heat the oil in a heavy pan and add the fennel seeds, cinnamon and dagarful (if using), and fry for a minute. Add the shallots, curry leaves or curry leaf powder and fry until the shallots are softened. Add chicken and fry for a couple of minutes, then stir in the garlic, ginger, sugar, salt and all of the spice blend. Fry for 2 mins then add the water and cook for 10 or so minutes, stirring often to prevent sticking, and adding more splashes of water if required, until the chicken is cooked and the sauce is reduced and sticking to the chicken (This is quite a dry "curry"). Sprinkle some chopped fresh coriander to garnish.
And that's it - enjoy with the rice and the tarka dal.

Hope you all noted my new "mise en place" trolley! :-)

So, to the Tarka Dal
I shall list Rick's ingredients here, but note that I used the Prashad Tarka dal mix of 150g masoor dhal (Split red lentils) and 150g mung Dhal (yellow split mung beans), mixed together and rinsed at least 4 times in warm water then drained.

Ingredients:
For the Dal -
200g Yellow tur dal or chana dal, soaked in cold water for 1 hour, drained
2 medium tomatoes, chopped (I used about 12 baby plum tomatoes)
1 medium onion, chopped
4 green chillies slit lengthways, seeds in (I had no whole chillies left so used about 2 tbsp chopped green chilli)
4 cloves garlic, peeled but left whole
2 tsp curry leaf powder (or small handful fresh curry leaves - don't use dried!)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp turmeric

For the tarka - (spiced oil)
50 ml sunflower oil
1 tsp black/ brown mustard seeds
2 shallots, finely chopped
4 dried kashmiri chillies, ripped up
15 fresh curry leaves (or another 2 tsp curry leaf powder)
Handful of chopped fresh coriander to garnish

Method:
Put the dal into a medium saucepan and cover with about 4 or 5cm water
Add all the remaining dal ingredients and bring to the boil, then lower the heat to medium/ low and simmer for about 45 mins to an hour until the dals are soft but still have a little bite. Use a potato masher to roughly break up the dals and other ingredients but leave plenty of texture
For the tarka, heat the oil over medium heat and add the mustard seeds. When they start popping, add the shallots, kashmiri chillies and curry leaves/ powder and fry for 2-3 mins until the shallots are softened. When you are ready to serve, pour or spoon the sizzling hot oil directly on top of the dal, sprinkle with chopped fresh coriander and serve.