Is cooking meant solely to feed the body or it’s a gift to humanity to enjoy art in its purest form? Let’s make chicken korma and find it out!

Chicken korma is India’s Spaghetti Bolognese. Maybe not in the closest sense as Spaghetti Bolognese is a totally unknown thing inside Italy, due to Bolognese sauce is not eaten with Spaghetti and Bolognese sauce is called simply ragout in Italian households. Not to mention that no Italian would dare to put ketchup on their pasta nor they a forced to succumb to such desperate measures.

Is ragout an artform?

Although ragout is commonly served daily, its making was elevated to the highest of artforms where flavors are carefully choreographed together by skill, care, and patience. If any of those pillars fail to fulfill their role, the dish will be like a painting that has been hastily finished missing the fine details of the strokes or even worse, leaving the canvas partly blank.

Make no mistake, it’s nothing wrong with a blank canvas where our imagination can run wild filling it with details much like an empty skillet. With the right skills and tools both of them can be filled with feelings that most humans understand and appreciate deeply.

Interestingly Korma in the word most basic sense means “braising” so our canvas or rather skillet is only limited by its edges and not by its content. Korma can be anything as long as it is braised so no wonder that we can make korma from beef, lamb, goat, or chicken. Not to mention that some kormas, namely the Navratan kormas use no meat at all but vegetables only.

So, korma is korma because its braised something and we use typical Indian spices in random order and amount, to prepare it. Much like in paintings, though if we want our audience to truly resonate with our feelings and understand our message, we have to constrain our art within universally recognizable boundaries.

Ingredients

Garam Masala

3½ tablespoons Cardamom (ground)
2½ tablespoons Cinnamon
½ teaspoon Nutmeg
3 tablespoons Cloves (ground)
3 tablespoons Black pepper (ground)
1 tablespoon Cumin (ground)
1½ teaspoon Coriander (ground)

Marinade

2 teaspoons Garam masala
2 cloves Garlic
2 teaspoon salt
1″ / 2.5cm Fresh ginger (peeled)
Cayanne to taste (optional)
½ teaspoon Turmeric (ground)
½ teaspoon Paprika (ground)
½ cup / 125ml Yogurt
2lb / 1000g Chicken

Sauce

½ cup / 125ml Oil
2 Onions (diced)
½ cup / 60g Almond flour (ground almond)
3 teaspoons Cardamon (ground)
½ teaspoon Black pepper (ground)
1 Bay leaf
½ teaspoon Cinnamon
½ teaspoon Coriander (ground)
1 teaspoon Garam masala
¾ cup / 200ml Yogurt or coconut milk or cream

How to make Chicken korma

Garam Masala

In a grinder or mortar grind all the ingredients together. Some will be content simply taking a garam masala mixture from a shop’s shelf but the purist surely will not.

Marinade

Place all the marinade ingredients, except the chicken into a food processor.
Give them a good whirl.
Mix the marinade with the meat and put it into the fridge for 30 minutes to a day. There is no rule for the type of meat we can use nor the shape but it’s advisable to cut them to fairly equal shapes so they cook evenly. In this recipe we used boneless chicken legs cut into 1″ / 2.5cm logs.
Some like to add the almond flour now instead of adding it into the sauce so it got fried with along the meat, developing additional flavors.

Sauce

Heat oil in a pan and saute the diced onions on high heat until a glassy / translucent look for about 3 – 5 minutes.
Mix in the almond flour, cardamon, black pepper, bay leaf, cinnamon, coriander and garam masala and saute it for a minute.
Add yogurt then bring it to boil.
Transfer the whole content of the pan into a food processor an process the sauce until smooth.

Assembly

Pour some oil into the saucepan and sear both side of the meat on medium to high heat until each side is golden brown for about 3 – 5 minutes.
Most likely we need to do it in batches, depending on the amount of meat we are preparing. If we have done it nicely then the meat haven’t burned down so we can simply pour back the sauce in and heat together the whole chicken korma then serve it.