Chicken Curry for the Indian Mother's Soul

I enjoy cooking. I first dabbled in the kitchen my senior year at Brown when I went off meal plan along with my college roommate P. She and I mostly made some sort of stir fry or some sort of pasta dish EVERY day. Every so often we'd cook with our roommate M., who had far superior culinary skills and we'd learn a thing or two. I whip up her homemade cherry cobbler when I want to look like I know something about baking.

Once I graduated, I moved to Greenwich, CT and met my roommate A. who also loved to cook. She and I would spend countless wasted hours at work printing every recipe available on the web it seemed. Our first night in our apartment, we made lobster, which remains a traumatic experience to this day. I'll just say that our pots were not big enough for the lobsters and one of them struggled as we dropped him in. When we moved a year later, we went to the grocery store and bought the prepared lobster as our final meal in the apartment. Mmmm, lobster that someone else has prepared for you is the best.

That one bad episode aside, cooking is a great respite from work life. When I moved to San Francisco, I was on my own for the first time and got into the habit of cooking almost every night. I picked at least one new recipe a week to learn something and vary my diet. I loved it. Unfortunately, when I moved to NYC, I completely got out of the habit of cooking. Take out is so cheap and easy and the city offers so many fantastic restaurants that the time commitment of cooking and the expense of buying groceries just wasn't worth it.

But, now I am a mom and want to ensure that my family eats healthy so I'm back to cooking almost every night. Even while handling a 4-month old who requires constant attention and amusement, cooking is once again a relaxing and happy part of my day.

When I moved to San Francisco, my mom wrote out many of her Indian recipes for me (although I still had to call her every 10 minutes when I was following them for some reason). I have always meant to type up her chicken curry recipe, so I would have it forever, especially now that the original notebook page is yellowed from the turmeric and falling apart from the oil spills.

Chicken Curry or Biriyani

1. Cut the chicken (breast and legs) into small pieces. Wash the chicken with warm water 3 to 4 times and drain.
2. Grind ginger and garlic (2 tsp each). Add 1 tsp each of red hot pepper and turmeric powder and 3 tbls oil. Mix all these ingredients with salt to taste.
3. Add the chicken and mix well. Set aside.
4. Put a pan on the stove with medium heat. Add oil (about 1/4 cup) and heat. Put in whole black pepper (2 or 3), 2 to 3 cloves and small cinnamon stick. Let it heat for a while before adding chopped (1 whole) onion.
5. Add the spiced chicken pieces and stir and cook until the chicken is well done.
6. Add 2 diced potatoes and cook again. When potatoes are done, add the tomato sauce and cook again. Add 1 tsp garam masala and then turn turn off the heat.
7. Mix with the cooked rice if needed (for biriyani)