Food & Psychology: Burmese Chicken Curry

Ok, my boyfriend is Burmese. He loves Burmese food and I actually do too (but it's quite oily and heavy on the tastebuds, other than that, I love it). So I have been trying for awhile now to cook the Burmese curry, it always turns out edible, but the taste is not the same as what he is used to at home. Yesterday, he found a recipe online that seems good and asked me to try it for dinner tonight. So I did and it turned out good! It was the first time that he had no complains about the dish. hehe. Click here to see where we got the recipe from! I did not follow the procedure on the original recipe strictly but the ingredients are the same (amounts might differ slightly), so here's what I did:

Ingredients:

3 chicken (medium, i think) thighs

1 small tomato

2 medium potatoes

1 medium onion

3 cloves of garlic

2cm ginger

1tsp tumeric

1tsp chili powder

½tbsp fish sauce

1tsp salt

2tbsp vegetable oil

700ml water (roughly)

Procedure:

Remove the extra skin on the chicken that's not attached to the meat (or just remove all skin if you want, just pull and it should come right off), any extra fats and the bone of each thigh (but don't throw them away!). You can also buy the ones that's already been de-boned and de-skinned. Then dice the chicken into cubes or chunks.

Dice the tomato into small bits. Mix (marinate) the chicken with the tomato. Tomato kind of acts like a meat tenderizer, this way, your meat will be tender! Then add ½tsp of salt and ½tsp tumeric powder to the marinate. The best way to marinate is with your hands so that everything is massaged into the chicken. Wear a glove (or use a small plastic bag) if you are mixing by hand as tumeric will stain your nails/flesh. If you think that there's not enough tumeric powder, just add more, it should stain the meat orange. In my photo, I think I could have added more tumeric powder.

Wash and peel the potatoes, and then dice them into roughly the same size as the chicken chunks. Peel the onions, ginger and garlic as well. Then, if you have mortar and pestle, pound them until you get a paste. Alternatively, use a food processor. Since I don't have a mortar and pestle, and I was too lazy to wash the blender after using it (it doesn't do a good job blending food into paste anyway), I just chopped them into as tiny as I could using my knife. It takes up a lot of time chopping up all the onions and garlic though.

Now we have all our ingredients prepared, we're ready to cook! Heat up the oil in a wok or pan on high heat. Add in the chicken skin and fats and fry them until the fats have melted and the skin is light brown and crispy. Then remove the chicken skin and set aside (it's yummy to eat with just salt and pepper, otherwise throw them in the bin).

Add in the onion-garlic-ginger paste that you have prepared and stir-fry it for 5 to 10 minutes until they start to brown and smell amazing. Now add in 1tsp of chili powder and the remaining ½tsp tumeric powder and mix well such that the paste is of an even colour. (I am sorry I often forget to take photos while I'm cooking so I don't have a photo of these previous few steps!)

Add in the chicken chunks and fry them for about 5 minutes, until the chicken has shrunk a little and feels firmer, but not entirely cooked.

Then add in the potatoes and mix. After that add in enough water to cover all the ingredients.

Season with the remaining ½tsp of salt and ½tbsp of fish sauce (you can leave the salt to the end and season according to your taste). Simmer for at least 30 minutes or until the chicken is tender to eat and the oil that was originally absorbed by the onion-garlic-ginger paste and chicken have surfaced. (The original recipe called it "oil return" - it should mean that when you see a layer of oil floating on the top, usually coloured). I covered the wok as I did not want the liquid to evaporate so quickly and this would take longer than 30 minutes - I took almost an hour. This is what you will see half way through, the liquid should have reduced by half. Stir occasionally to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom and burn.