Spiced Chicken Curry Sauce
Overview
Chicken and a great many vegetables cooked down with curry powder, sazon and scotch bonnet, then thickened with a cornflour slurry. The source calls it South Asian; the ingredients say otherwise, and it is worth being straight about which. A genuine South Asian curry is built on whole spices bloomed in fat, on ginger and garlic paste, and on onions cooked down at length. This one uses curry powder, all-purpose seasoning, bouillon cubes and blended scotch bonnet, the standard vocabulary of West African and Caribbean home cooking, plus sazon, which is a Puerto Rican seasoning blend now sold everywhere. Sesame oil is the one genuinely East Asian note. What that amounts to is a diaspora dish that borrows the word curry rather than the tradition, and it is more interesting described accurately than mislabelled. The cabbage, carrots and three colours of bell pepper are not a South Asian habit either. They are what makes this closer to a Nigerian or Ghanaian fried pepper sauce, the kind ladled over rice on a weeknight. No country is claimed for it, and the flags note that its own description contradicts its ingredients. The source's closing line is garbled, it promises the streets of somewhere and then names no city, so it has not been carried across.
Ingredients
Dietary tags are provided by contributors as a guide, not verified by AFN, and they depend on the products you buy. If you have a serious allergy, check every ingredient yourself. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement
Directions
- 1
Warm a splash of sesame oil in a large pan over medium heat.
- 2
Put in the chicken pieces and cook until no longer pink.
- 3
Tip in the sliced onion, carrots, bell peppers and cabbage.
- 4
Stir-fry until the vegetables begin to soften but still have bite.
- 5
Season with the sazon, all-purpose seasoning, curry powder and seasoning cubes, turning everything over so the chicken and vegetables are evenly coated.
- 6
Pour in the blended scotch bonnet and mix thoroughly.
- 7
Lower the heat and let it cook gently for a few minutes so the flavours settle together.
- 8
Pour in the cornflour slurry gradually, stirring constantly, until the sauce reaches the thickness you want.
- 9
Taste, adjust the seasoning, and serve over rice.
Africook’s Notes
Personal notes from Sobecooks- Add the cornflour slurry a little at a time. It thickens fast, and a sauce taken too far cannot easily be loosened again.
- Keep the vegetables slightly firm. They carry on softening in the hot sauce, and limp cabbage is the usual failure here.
- Blend the scotch bonnet rather than chopping it, so the heat spreads evenly instead of arriving in ambushes.
- Cut the chicken small and evenly so it cooks in the same time as the vegetables.
- Sazon contains a good deal of salt, as do most seasoning cubes. Taste before adding any more.
- It reheats well and the vegetables hold up better than you would expect, so it suits batch cooking.
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