Caramel-Glazed Cardamom Palmiers

 
She’s known in many circles as the "First Lady of Chocolate", and if you have even a passing interest in the stuff you probably know the name well. Alice Medrich is, of course, the founder of the legendary Berkeley, California patisserie Cocolat (which I’ve previously written about here), and the best-selling author of cookbooks such as Cocolat, Chocolate and the Art of Lowfat Desserts, and Bittersweet. It’s her most recent release, however, that seems to be taking the world by storm. Pure Dessert, published last September by Artisan, is Medrich’s first book not centered on the theme of chocolate, and it features none of the dramatic, complex creations that made her famous. Instead, it’s about dessert in its most basic, fundamental form, and specifically, how we can use ingredients like different flours, sugars, dairy products and aromatics to create things that are as elegant as they are simple. I was so intrigued by the concept – and in love with the results – that I asked Alice if she would mind chatting a bit about the book and how her approach to dessert has changed over the years. Happily, she agreed.

 
Pure Dessert represents a somewhat new direction for you, as it’s not about chocolate. Where did the inspiration come from to write it, and what did you learn in the process?

Working with chocolate in the last 10 years lead me here. I began to notice that better chocolate seemed to demand simpler recipes. To honor superb chocolate, you don’t want complicated recipes or any dish that is overburdened with too many other flavors, or too much sugar or fat either for that matter.  I took that idea and applied it to other ingredients… It wasn’t big shift anyway. I’ve always gravitated towards simplicity and clarity. I’ve always tried to create recipes that bring out the best characteristics of my ingredients.  This book allowed to to experiment. I learned that whole grains could be used in tender buttery indulgent cookies and cakes without making them taste or feel like health food, how to get the most dramatic results with raw sugars, how to use herbs and spices in unusual ways, how best to showcase fresh cheeses in dessert, what to do with fabulous vodka (other than sipping it) and a zillions other things, all shared in the book.  

I know this is a terrible question to ask a cookbook author, but which of all the recipes in Pure Dessert would you be happiest to see on your own dessert plate tonight?

No it’s not a fair question, so I’ll give you an unfair answer! This would depend on my mood…. If I felt like indulging in sophisticated chocolate, I’d choose the Italian Chocolate Almond Torte with lots of whipped cream or Citron Vodka Chocolates. If I just needed comfort food I’d go to My Chocolate Pudding or Ginger Snaps or Nutella Bread Pudding. If something sexy was needed, I’d pick Saffron and Cardamom or Jasmine Panna Cotta. With a cosy cup of tea I’d pick Sesame Cake or Sherry and Olive Oil Poundcake… I could go on, but you get the picture. 

Your recipes have always been much-loved for being virtually foolproof, down to the last detail. Tell me about your development and testing process. How many incarnations does a typical recipe of yours go through?

Sometimes I get lucky and my idea translates itself into a good recipe in two or three tries. Sometimes I go a little crazy. I occasionally make two dozen tries before I am satisfied with a recipe. This is not because the 8th or 12th try isn’t good, but because I get hooked on how each small change affects the outcome. I rationalize this "waste of time" by calling it an investment in education that will serve me in the future. Sometimes my out-takes get developed into new recipes weeks or even years later…

Your earlier books have a lot of complex, showstopping creations, while the recipes in Pure Dessert are all about simplicity and letting the flavor of the ingredients shine through. Does this shift in recipe style reflect a change in the way you cook and bake generally?

When as a pastry chef in my own shop, it was easy to create new show stopping multi component desserts. I could stroll around the kitchen and find all the elements: different kinds of cake bases, butter creams, caramelized nuts, whipped cream, a variety of liqueur syrups, lemon curd…everything was there for me.  It was easy to concoct a new dessert.  The harder part (and I was good at this!) was breaking down the recipes steps so that the home cook could make those elaborate desserts successfully. I built my original reputation as a cookbook author by empowering the ambitious home cook to succeed with really complex recipes. But when I stopped working as a professional pastry chef, I began to relate more to the home cook (after all I too was baking at home myself!). I started focusing on recipes that were superb but simple, and perfect for busy cooks who had family responsibilities and/or jobs outside the home. I felt I was writing for people who knew good food and wanted to serve it at home, but didn’t have endless hours to prepare a multi part dessert.

There is a lovely symmetry in all this: I started my career with the simplest French chocolate desserts and chocolate truffles. Now, I can’t literally say I am coming full circle, because I am in a different place than when I started. I am working with different ingredients and different influences. You could say, that after 30-plus years, I am still learning and growing. I could say that I am re-inventing my own idea of simplicity.  

When you opened Cocolat in 1976, you were quite a culinary pioneer. Even in Berkeley there wasn’t anything comparable to the sophisticated European desserts you were producing, but thanks to Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, the city was already gaining notoriety as a gourmet hotspot. Do you think being in Berkeley contributed to Cocolat’s success? How did your customers’ tastes evolve over the years you ran Cocolat?

There was so much excitement around the corner of Shattuck and Vine. We (Alice Waters, Jeremiah Towers, Alfred Peet, the Cheeseboard collective, Lenny the Butcher, etc.) were showing people what food, coffee, cheese, chocolate, and desserts could taste like. We weren’t conducting focus groups to provide what people thought they wanted so much as teaching people what was possible, what they COULD want! Sounds arrogant, but it’s really true. One of the things that made it work was Berkeley. Everyone in Berkeley was hungry, curious, and enthusiastic about new tastes and experiences.
 
One thing that astonished me when I read it was that when you started Cocolat, you had no experience baking professionally (or running a business!). Tell me about what prompted you to start the business, and some of the challenges your inexperience posed. Did you ever in your wildest dreams suspect the business would be as successful as it was, and make your name as well-known as it did?

I suppose
, like many of the Shattuck and Vine innovators of the time, ignorance was bliss and passion was our fuel. I wanted to do it. I knew my desserts were better than anything sold, and I didn’t have any ideas how difficult it might be. But then, there were others on the street that were similarly idealistic and they seemed to be doing it. And, purely from a business perspective, the cost of getting started was far less then than now, even in relative terms. I was able to start out with a fairly simple store front decorated with vintage posters and outfitted with used showcases and equipment. It wasn’t necessary to seduce the public with a glamorous store that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in borrowed capital to build. The desserts and chocolate themselves wooed the clientele. It was all about delicious and beautiful hand-made desserts made with excellent ingredients….always excellent ingredients. The idea of Pure Dessert actually started there and then for me.

I think everybody had their favorite Cocolat creation, but for me (like many, I’m sure!), Cocolat’s highlight was unquestionably the truffles. I loved the funny story you put in your book Bittersweet about how they were born of ignorance and ineptitude, far bigger than they should have been and requiring constant refrigeration because the chocolate wasn’t tempered. Despite that, I can honestly say I’ve never eaten better truffles anywhere, and I think a lot of people would say the same. How did you hit upon that completely untraditional but sensational method?

Actually I learned to make those very untraditional truffles dipped in untempered chocolate from a little old lady in Paris. (This was a different little old lady from my French land lady. From her I learned to make truffles with eggs and butter instead of cream—my personal favorites–the recipe for which is also in Bittersweet).  At the time, I knew so little about the technical aspects of chocolate that I didn’t quite realize the down side of not tempering (having to keep the product refrigerated). But neither did I understand the enormous benefit of not tempering, which was the quick and exciting melt in your mouth sensation on the palate. The truffle technique she taught me should never have been applied to a commercial product; it should have remained at home. But luckily I didn’t know any better. Later when I realized that what I was doing was "not very professional", I also knew that people were over the moon about the truffles precisely because of my "not very professional" technique. And also because the truffles were very chocolaty compared to the very sweet chocolate candies of the day. The truffles were an entirely new experience and they blew people away. Many people remember them as you do. I am not sure that they really are better than the best on the market today, but I love hearing that they are!

What’s the one piece of advice you wish someone had given you before you opened Cocolat? What advice can you give to others looking to enter the baking and pastry professions?

Passion is very important. And the ability to work harder than you ever thought you could will help as well. But planning and financial expertise is essential too, more than ever. If you don’t have it, find it.

Can you reveal what’s next on the horizon for you?

I love to create cookbooks because I learn so much doing it. I may never stop that activity. But I still love to create new products, even if it is for other people…. We’ll see.

 

Caramel-Glazed Cardamom Palmiers

If you like the classic puff-pastry palmiers, you will love these kissing cousins with their haunting fragrance and sweet-salty crunch. I made a batch of these last week, planning to give most of them away, but made the mistake of not packaging them up immediately. Within twenty-four hours they were gone. I would like to believe that little fairies came during the night and helped themselves to the vast majority, but that would be unfair to the cookies. Yes, they are that good, and yes, you have been warned.

Source: Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich
Yield: 48 cookies

2 1/2 cups (11.25 oz/320g) all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
8 ounces (225g/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter
8 ounces (225g) cold cream cheese

For the cardamom sugar:
1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cardamom (freshly ground if possible – it really does make a difference)
2 large pinches fine salt

Combine the flour, sugar and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse briefly to distribute the ingredients. Cut each stick of butter into eight pieces and add them to the bowl. Pulse until the butter resembles coarse bread crumbs. Cut the cream cheese into pieces and add them to the bowl. Pulse again until the dough begins to clump together, about 30 seconds. Divide the dough in half and shape into 2 square patties. Wrap and chill until firm, about 4 hours.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and let it rest on the counter to soften slightly, 15 to 20 minutes. Meanwhile make the cardamom sugar. Mix the sugar with the cardamom. Transfer 2 tablespoons of the sugar mixture to a small cup and mix in the salt. Set aside.

Set aside half of the unsalted cardamom sugar for the second piece of dough. Sprinkle the work surface liberally with some of the remaining cardamom sugar. Set the dough on the sugared surface and sprinkle it with more of the sugar. Turn the dough frequently and resugar it and the work surface liberally as you roll the dough into a rectangle 24×8 inches (60x20cm) and less than 1/8-inch (1/3-cm) thick. Use the sugar generously to prevent sticking and to ensure that the cookies will caramelize properly in the oven. Trim the edges of the rectangle evenly.

Mark the center of the dough with a small indentation. Starting at one short edge, fold about 2.5 inches (6.5cm) of the dough almost one-third of the distance to the center mark. Without stretching or pulling, loosely fold the dough toward the center three times, leaving a scant 1/4” (.5cm) space at the center mark. Likewise, fold the other end of the dough toward the center three times, leaving a tiny space at the center. The dough should now resemble a long, narrow open book. Fold one side of the dough over the other side, as if closing the book. You should have an eight-layer strip of dough about 2 ½ inches wide and 8 inches long.

Sprinkle the remaining cardamom sugar under and on top of the dough. Roll gently from one end of the dough to the other to compress the layers and lengthen the strip to about 9 inches (23cm). Wrap the dough loosely in waxed paper (not plastic wrap, which causes moisture to form on the outside of the dough); set aside. Roll out, fold and wrap the second piece of dough with the remaining cardamom sugar. Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes.

Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and heat the oven to 375F/190C. Remove one piece of dough from the refrigerator, unwrap it, and use a sharp knife to trim the ends evenly. Cut into 1/3-inch (.75cm) slices and arrange them 1.5 (3.75cm) inches apart on two ungreased cookie sheets. Bake until the undersides are golden brown, 8 to 10 minutes, rotating the pans from top to
bottom and front to back about halfway through baking.

Remove the pans from the oven and turn the cookies over. Sprinkle each one with a pinch or two of the reserved salted sugar mixture. Return the sheets to the oven until the cookies are deep golden brown, another 3 to 5 minutes. Rotate the pans and watch the cookies carefully at this stage to prevent burning. If the cookies brown at different rates, remove the dark ones and let the lighter ones continue to bake. Transfer the cookies to rack and let cool completely.

Remove the second piece of dough from the refrigerator, cut and bake. Let cool. The cookies can be kept in an airtight container for at least a week.

 

Yes, the rumors are true – here in food blog-land it’s time once again for the annual Menu For Hope!

For those of you who have recently joined us, the Menu for Hope is an annual event founded by Pim and collectively run by food bloggers around the globe in order to raise money for those desperately in need. Last year was an incredible success, with over $60,000 raised for the UN’s World Food Program, an organization dedicated to providing emergency food aid and carrying out rehabilitation and development programs for populations around the world. This year we are funding the WFP again, but they have allowed us to earmark our funds for a specific program, a school-lunch program in the kingdom of Lesotho, South Africa.

The food situation in Lesotho is dire. After five years of drought, it is estimated that disease and malnutrition claim the lives of one in 12 children before they reach the age of five. The kingdom is also confronting the triple threat of increasing chronic poverty, rising HIV/AIDS rates and weakened government capacity. This threat takes a heavy toll on the households of the rural poor in Lesotho; 56% of the population live on less then $2 per day, and for children born today, life expectancy is only 36 years. Currently, the WFP’s school feeding programme provides a daily nutritious meal to nearly 150,000 children. Even more importantly, they have been pushing for local procurement for much of this food: instead of buying surplus food in the US and shipping it to Africa to feed the kids, they are now buying maize and other produce from the local farmers, thereby putting funds back into the local economy. If you’re interested, here are the full details of the program, which stands as a model for sustainable development assistance in Africa.

And you can help support it! All it takes is a small donation, even $10, and not only will you be helping to fund the WFP’s activities, you’ll also be entering yourself in a raffle to win one of dozens and dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of absolutely incredible prizes from food bloggers around the world. Sounds pretty much like a win-win situation for everyone, doesn’t it?

MY PRIZE:

(prize code UK20)

This year I am offering one lucky winner the full trilogy of Moro cookbooks. Moro, of course, is the groundbreaking and critically-acclaimed restaurant in London run by husband-and-wife team Samuel and Samantha Clark. Their rustic, highly imaginative cuisine fuses Iberian and Middle Eastern influences in a way that manages to be both exotic and familiar, and although I’ve only had the pleasure of eating in the restaurant twice, both meals rank without a doubt among my top-ten restaurant meals ever. The books themselves are chock-full of exactly the same kind of food, but unlike many restaurant cookbooks, these contain recipes that are perfectly suited to the home kitchen. Just to whet your appetite, here are some sample recipes from all three books:

Moro, the Cookbook:
Ajo blanco; Mushroom and almond soup with fino sherry; Chestnut and chorizo soup; Grilled quail with rose petals; Hummus with ground lamb and pinenuts; Feta salad with spinach, crispbread, sumac and pinenuts; Aubergine and red pepper salad with caramelized butter and yogurt; Pumpkin-feta fatayer; Paella with pork, chorizo and spinach; Slow-cooked lamb with artichokes and mint; Pork cooked in milk with bay and cinnamon; Pheasant with cloves, cinnamon and chestnuts; Cauliflower with saffron, pinenuts and raisins; Quince and almond tart; Chocolate, coffee and cardamom truffle cake; Rosewater and cardamom ice cream; Yogurt cake with pistachios

Casa Moro:
Fried aubergines with honey; Saffron, tahini and yogurt soup; Carrot puree with caraway and feta; Salt cod, orange and potato salad; Turkish pizza with tomato, lamb and allspice; Rabbit with rosemary rice; Hot chorizo salad with fino sherry; Roast chicken stuffed with sage and labneh; Spiced beef salad with fenugreek and hummus; Pork in almond sauce; Chicken and cardamom dumplings; Warm pumpkin and chickpea salad with tahini; Blood orange and rosewater sorbet; Dates with coffee and cardamom; Pistachio, orange and almond tart; Chocolate, chestnut and almond cake

Moro East*:
Tomato soup with cumin and figs; Iranian omelette with saffron; Bitter leaves with tahini and crispy caramelized onions; Salmorejo with prawns, avocado and tomato; Labneh with anchovies, red chili and cucumber; Duck liver terrine with grapes; Grilled aubergine salad with tomatoes and pomegranates; Beetroot salad with pistachio sauce; Artichokes and potatoes with oloroso sherry; Braised celery with tomato, olives and coriander; Jewelled pumpkin rice; Chicken and prawn romesco; Rhubarb and rosewater fool; Almond meringues with anise and raspberries; Saffron ice cream with pistachio biscuits
*check out Heidi’s great review of this brand-new release

I will be happy to ship these books anywhere in the world, provided amazon.co.uk normally ships there. Please note, however, that these are the UK versions of these cookbooks, with British terminology and metric measurements. I really don’t think this should be a problem for anyone (and by this I mean you, Americans!), but nevertheless, if the winner happens to live in a metrically-challenged area, I’ll be happy to offer my recipe-consulting services to help you interpret and adapt the Moro recipes to your own kitchen.

 

HOW TO ENTER

1. Choose a prize or prizes of your choice from the prize list at http://www.chezpim.com/blogs/2007/12/menu-for-hope-4.html. You must make sure to check the terms and conditions for the individual prizes BEFORE you bid, as some will come with restrictions regarding where they ship to or how long the prize is valid for.

2. Go to the donation site at http://www.firstgiving.com/menuforhope4 and make a donation.

3. Please specify which prize you’d like in the ‘Personal Message’ section in the donation form when confirming your donation. You must write in how many tickets per prize, and please use the prize code. The code for my prize is UK20.

Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for UK01 and 3 tickets for EU02. Please write 2xUK01, 3xEU02

4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the information so we can claim the corporate match.

5. Please check the box to allow us to see your email address so that we could contact you in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.

Check back on Chez Pim on Wednesday, January 9 for the results of the raffle. I will also post an announcement here with the the winner of my prize.

Thank you so much for your support and for helping to make this event even more successful than last year!!

One Hundred Almond Curry 

 

Knock, knock.

Oh hello, I was just dropping by to see if you’re hungry. Has your stomach finally recovered from the masses of turkey and stuffing, the one can too many of wiggly cranberry sauce and that bottomless bowl of mashed potatoes? Have the blisters on your feet started to subside after forty-eight consecutive hours of standing on them in an attempt to once again out-do last year’s feast? Good, I’m glad to hear it, because I’d like you come on a trip with me.

The thing is, I know how much you love this season with all its festiveness and good food, but I also know (though of course you would never admit it) that part of you is secretly dreading the return of all those reindeer-shaped cookies and punchbowls of eggnog and bricks of dry fruitcake that colonize the holiday landscape like subdividing bacteria at this time of year. So let’s take break from all that for a little while, and while we’re at it, why don’t we leave everything behind – the damp, cold weather, the awkward office Christmas parties, and of course those ubiquitous red, green and gold garlands of which we’ve seen so many by now that we occasionally contemplate hanging ourselves with them just so they’ll be declared a health hazard and no one will ever have to suffer their sparkly, gaudy presence again – and get out of here completely. Instead, I’ll take you someplace sunny. Someplace warm and tropical. Someplace with beaches and palm trees. Someplace like…India.

You with me? Oh good. Don’t forget to pack the sunscreen and some light reading material. And a few iodine tablets, and oh, some wide-spectrum antibiotics can’t hurt either I suppose, but never mind that, I’ll keep that stuff in my bag. What’s that you say? If sun and beaches and palms are all we want, why don’t we go someplace like Florida, or maybe Fiji? Oh, well actually because those things are not all we want. In fact, we’re not really looking for beaches and palm trees at all, I just mentioned them to get you on board with me. Sorry about that. No, the real reason I’ve brought you along on this trip to India with me is to introduce you to some great food I’ve just discovered.

I know, I know, you already know an awful lot about Indian food – I realize that. You could even order saag paneer and chicken tikka masala in your sleep, right? And yes, smartypants, you also probably know all there is to know about pakoras and chapatis and mango pickle too, I get it! But our trip isn’t about any of those things. We’re going to India today to eat a type of cuisine as far removed from what your corner Indian place serves as a Big Mac is from those chopped meat patties that sailors in Hamburg used to eat. We’re going to eat some Parsi cuisine.

What did you say? Did you ask what on earth Parsi cuisine is? No no, don’t worry, there’s no need to be ashamed. Not long ago I didn’t know much about Parsi cuisine either, except that I found a delicious recipe for some Parsi pakoras a year or so ago that I advocated enthusiastically on this very site. In retrospect, it was a little delinquent on my part to do nothing to enlighten either of us on the details of Parsi cuisine apart from a feeble little link to Wikipedia, but never fear, I intend to remedy that situation at once.

You see, I just got my hands on a wonderful book that explains it all far better than Wikipedia ever could. Niloufer Ichaporia King is the person responsible for it, actually, and while I had never heard of her before, if you happen to be a regular at that venerable Berkeley institution Chez Panisse, you certainly might have, particularly if you’ve ever had the good fortune to get a seat for the annual Parsi New Year’s dinner she cooks there (and if you haven’t, and you live anywhere nearby, I would stop reading now and make a beeline for the phone – thankfully Parsi New Year is in March, so you might even stand a chance of not being laughed off the line).

Anyhow, Ms. King, in addition to being a cook, a culinary historian and an accomplished anthropologist, grew up in Bombay’s Parsi community, and in this, her first book, has weaved a fascinating tale of her people, their history and cuisine. The modern-day Parsis, she tells us, are not a group defined by geography or language, but a close-knit cultural and religious community that can trace its roots back to the Persian Zoroastrians who migrated to the subcontinent from what is now Iran more than a thousand years ago. While Zoroastrianism itself is an ancient and fascinating religion worthy of more space than I can devote to it here, the truly remarkable thing about the Parsis is the way their cuisine has survived intact for so long, and continues to display many reminders of its Persian heritage. The Parsis love sweet and sour flavors, for example, and like the Persians add fruits like apricots, pomegranates and dates to many of their dishes, particularly those containing meat. They also love rich foods, and cream, nuts and eggs make frequent and much-anticipated appearances (in fact, the Parsis are so crazy about eggs that apparently the rest of India jokes that Parsi cuisine is anything with an egg on top). They are, however, as much Indian as they are Persian, which their complex spice mixes, penchant for palate-searing chilies and wide repertoire of pungent chutneys and pickles attest to.

But the main reason you should be interested in Parsi cuisine is not because it’s so fascinating or so historical, but because it’s so delicious. In the four weeks or so that I’ve had this book on my shelf I’ve made not one, not two, but seven spectacular dishes from it, all completely different from any Indian food I’ve made or eaten before but all good enough that I would get on a plane and fly a very long distance to taste more like them. The deviled eggs, with their touch of honey and crunch of green chilies were inhaled in five minutes flat, while the buttery cardamom cake, half of which I foolishly sent home with some guests, had me sneaking quietly out of bed the next morning just so I could claim the last piece for breakfast. The best dish, however, was this long-simmered chicken curry lyrically named ‘one hundred almond curry’ that was so good it plunged the future of our marriage into doubt when one of us (I’m not naming names, but it wasn’t me!) took the liberty of mopping up ALL the leftover sauce that remained in the pot after I had dished out second helpings, though in light of the cardamom cake affair I guess I can’t be too mad. While I could easily go on for hours about the masterful balance of spices, the genius of tempering the almonds’ richness with tamarind, and the mystery of how a curry enriched with coconut could manage to taste creamier than one made with cream itself, it’s all a bit futile, really, since this is one of those dishes that needs to be tasted to be understood, and I can assure you that once you do you’ll care far less about what’s in it than where your next plateful is coming from.

So what do you say? I can’t promise it will come anywhere close to the beaches of Florida or Fiji, but a quick trip to India – leaving at dinnertime, maybe? – should make all that fruitcake-nibbling and office-party schmoozing just a little bit easier to endure. And who knows, you might even come back with a tan.

 
One Hundred Almond Curry

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I was never very happy with the Indian food
I produced at home until I invested in a piece of kitchen equipment that made all the difference. It’s called a wet-dry grinder, and unlike the typical Western-kitchen alternatives of blender, food processor and coffee grinder, these little marvels are specifically designed to tackle the most difficult of Indian cooking tasks, namely turning mixtures of rock-hard spices and stringy vegetal matter into smooth-as-silk pastes. The Porsches of the wet-dry grinder world are made by Sumeet, and one of these powerful beasts will be taking up residence on my counter just as soon as I’ve saved up enough money to buy one. At the moment, though, I’m relying on a very reasonable (and much cheaper) alternative – the Revel Wet n’ Dry Grinder (US – UK), which looks like a coffee grinder but can handle liquids as well in its detachable bowl. You have to be careful, though, as its ferociously powerful motor can easily burn out; short (1-2 second) pulses are really all it can handle. Oh, and about the curry: feel free to make it with shrimp instead of chicken, in which case just add some peeled raw shrimp to the finished sauce and simmer until they turn pink, or you can easily go vegetarian by adding 2 halved hard-boiled eggs per person just before serving. Also, you’ll find that like most curries, this one just keeps increasing in flavor as its sits, so do your best to have leftovers!
Serves: 6-8
Source: adapted slightly from My Bombay Kitchen by Niloufer Ichaporia King 

For the masala paste
10 dried bird’s eye (red) chilies
4 teaspoons coriander seeds
3 teaspoons white poppy seeds
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
8 whole cloves
4 cardamom pods
10 black peppercorns
2 (2-inch/5cm long) sticks cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
101 (about 3/4 cup/100g) unblanched almonds (Parsis consider round numbers to be bad luck, so they throw in an extra almond)
8 cloves garlic, peeled
1 (3-inch/7.5cm long) piece peeled fresh ginger, coarsely chopped
1/4 to 1/2 cup (60-120ml) water

For the chicken
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 large onions, peeled and thinly sliced
2-3 lbs (1-1.5 kg) skinless bone-in chicken thighs (I usually figure 2 thighs per person)
4 cups (1ltr) water
3 cups (750ml) frozen or canned coconut milk (for canned I prefer Chaokoh brand)
2 teaspoons fine sea salt, plus more to taste
2-3 tablespoons prepared tamarind concentrate (available at Indian and Asian stores)
2-3 tablespoons jaggery or brown sugar 

cilantro/fresh coriander, chopped, for garnish (optional)
toasted sliced almonds, for garnish (optional)

For the masala, in a heavy skillet, toast the chiles, coriander, poppy seeds and cumin over medium heat until the seeds turn brown and everything smells toasted. If you have an Indian-style wet-dry grinder (see above) grind all the masala ingredients to a paste in it. If you don’t, start by grinding the toasted spices along with the cloves, cardamom, peppercorns, cinnamon and turmeric into a fine powder in a coffee grinder (it’s best if it’s dedicated to this purpose, since your coffee will taste like curry otherwise!). Combine this powder with the almonds, garlic and ginger in a food processor. Pulse until the almonds are finely ground. Add the water, starting with the smaller amount and adding only as much as necessary, and process the mixture to as smooth a paste as possible.

For the chicken, heat the oil in a deep, heavy-bottomed pan over medium-low heat. Add the onions and sauté them gently, stirring occasionally, until they are golden brown and highly fragrant, about 30 minutes. Increase the heat to medium and add the masala paste, stirring for a few minutes until the aroma rises. Watch it carefully as it can scorch easily on the bottom. Add the chicken thighs, water, coconut milk and 2 teaspoons salt. Bring this mixture to a boil, reduce the heat slightly, and let it cook gently, stirring occasionally, for about 45 minutes, or until the chicken is fork-tender and has started to pull away from the bone. Remove the chicken to a plate with a slotted spoon and increase the heat to medium-high. Boil the sauce, if needed, until it thickens to the consistency of heavy cream. When it’s as thick as you prefer, stir in the tamarind and jaggery to taste (it should be just slightly sweet-sour), adjust the salt, and return the chicken to the pot. Serve hot, garnished with chopped cilantro and toasted sliced almonds, and accompanied by rice or naan. Dal and a green vegetable dish also make wonderful accompaniments.