Let's Make : Chicken Vindaloo

According to Lizzie Collingham in her book "Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors", the British discovered vindaloo in 1797 when they invaded Goa. By then the British, Dutch, and the French had joined the Portuguese in India and were jostling for control of the lucrative spice trade. During their 17-year long occupation of Portuguese India, the British discovered the delights of Goan cookery. They were relieved to find that the Goan (Catholic) cooks were free from the irritating caste or religious restrictions that prevented Hindus and Muslims from cooking beef and pork and, when the British left in 1813, they took their Goan cooks with them. In this way Vindaloo made its way to British India and from there back to Britain..pg 68

Vindaloo is normally regarded as an Indian curry, but in fact it is a Goan adaptation of the Portuguese dish "carne de vinbo e albos" or meat cooked in vinegar and garlic. The name vindaloo is simply a garbled pronunciation of vinho e albos.

Vindaloo is traditionally made with pork but the British liked it best with duck; I prefer it with chicken, so the recipe I am going to share is one modified for chicken and taken from Bridget White Kumar's, "Flavours of the Past : The Very Best of Classic Colonial Cuisine" which I bought from the author on my last visit to Bangalore. I made this for lunch and the family loved it, I hope you do, too.

Chicken Vindaloo

1 kg Chicken cut into medium pieces

3 big tomatoes pureed

2 big onions chopped

3 medium potatoes peeled and cut into quarters

1 tsp mustard powder

3 tsps chilly powder ( or 1 tsp kashmiri chilli powder and 2 tsps paprika)

2 tsps cumin powder

1 tsp pepper (powdered)

1 tbsp garlic paste

1/2 cup vinegar (malt vinegar preferrable)

1/2 tsp haldi or turmeric powder

Method:

Heat oil in a heavy bottomed pan and fry the onions until golden-brown. Add the garlic paste and fry well. Add the chilly powder, turmeric, cumin, mustard powder, pepper and a little water and fry well till the oil separates from the masala. Add the tomato puree and salt and fry some more. Now add the chicken, potatoes and vinegar and mix well. Add more water depending on how much gravy is required and cook till chicken and potatoes are done.

If you enjoy this, I will share more recipes and extracts from both, Collingham and Kumar White's books.

For an excellent review of "Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors" by Lizzie Collingham, please check out Niranjana's review at ECLECTICA


p.s. I hadn't planned on this post so I didn't take a picture of the chicken vindaloo made in my kitchen, so I borrowed one of mercuryvapour's pictures from flickr. Hope he doesn't mind.