Sunday Recipe: Making Durban Chicken with Celia Wakefield

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Are you ready for the debut (and maybe only, who knows, we'll see how it goes) of the Jungle Reds Cooking Show?!? Yes, you are! 

Today, we're in the expert hands of commenter and honorary Red Celia Wakefield, whose easy summer supper, lava cakes, and mock grilled ribs you've all enjoyed.  Celia has a knack for making elegant dishes simply and vice versa; you won't be surprised she was a professional caterer for many years.

I made a pig of myself eating Durban chicken at her house a few weeks ago, and when she volunteered to demonstrate how to make it for us al, I jumped at the chance. Durban chicken is an Indian dish from South Africa, spicy, but within British tastes, and SO moist and tender. Once you make this, you'll never roast a bird again. Celia's is a version of the classic recipe featured in Madhur Jaffrey's  From Curries to Kebabs.

 Ingredients: 
1 chicken, skinned whole (don't fret, Celia will show you how!)

For the spice sauce:
4 T lemon or lime juice
2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1t salt
1 t cumin
1 t coriander
1 T Trader Joes Chili Lime Blend (Celia uses this in everything, you just need to give in and buy some now.) 
Pepper to taste. 
2 T olive oil.






Peel the garlic cloves and ginger. Mash the garlic with the side of your knife and cube the ginger. Put all the sauce ingredients together and pour into a blender, food processor or grinding mill (Celia uses a Prep Master.) Blend until it's well-integrated. Pour it back into a bowl so it's easy to scoop up and smear on the bird.

 Now, let's get to work peeling the chicken! First the breast:




....and then the rest. Snap or cut off the ends of the wings; you can save them for stock.



After you've denuded the chicken, make three deep cuts in each breast, and also in the meaty parts of the legs. Place the bird in a tinfoil-lined pan - you're going to wrap it, so make sure you have plenty of foil!  Rub generous amounts of the spice sauce into the cuts and surrounding meat, and pour anything left on the breast.




Set the oven on 425 F. (220 C) Roll and crimp the foil, first the long way across the breast, then on each end. You're making a tight packet for the chicken to cook in - just like when you made camping food in the Girl or Boy Scouts! Bake for 1 hour.



After an hour, open the foil and baste with the juices. Try not to faint from the heavenly smell. Test if the chicken is done with a meat thermometer; if necessary, return the bird for another 15 minutes or until the interior temperature reads 150 F (75 C).



It sounds like a lot of work, but really, it worked up very quickly. Celia served the chicken sliced off the bone atop a bed of coconut rice with some seasonal veggies on the side. So good. If it weren't for the fact I want to be invited back, I would have eaten it all.

What do you think, dear readers? Will you try it? Do you have a recipe to share? And how do you like our video presentation? Should we do it again some time?

Mango Lassi #recipe @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: While in India for two weeks, we ate lots and lots of wonderful Indian food, most of it very spicy. Not necessarily hot--unless you asked for that, but definitely spicy. A man we met explained it this way: Indians don’t like plain food. That was certainly our experience! (We did not eat street food or uncooked vegetables--did not want to risk the dreaded Delhi belly.)

One day I noticed that two of the other travelers in our group – both originally from England – were sipping tall white drinks at both lunch and dinner. They explained that this was a yogurt drink called a lassi, good for calming stomachs that might be a little bit distressed by traveling and unfamiliar flavors.

So I tried one and was instantly hooked. Apparently there are salty lassies as well as sweet, which can contain fruit, especially mango. I only tried the plain one as we were being very cautious about eating fruit too. But I determined I would make one and share it when I got home. So here is the simple recipe for a mango lassi.

Ingredients

One ripe mango
About 3/4 cup plain whole milk yogurt
Sprinkle of cardamom
Ice cubes

Peel and pit the mango and whirl it in your blender or food processor until puréed. Then add the yogurt and whirl that in too. If it's too thick to drink, add a couple of ice cubes and grind them up with the yogurt/mango mixture. Or you can just add the ice cubes to the glass. Sprinkle with a little cardamom and enjoy! 

And here for your viewing pleasure are a few photos of Indian food and vendors...

Street food sure looked good!

Feeding the pigeons for good Karma

 

A fancy feast!

Are you a fan of Indian food? Or an adventurous eater?

Good News...and a visit to India!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Gigi Pandian is having a good month. Putting it mildly. Sometimes wonderful things happen to wonderful people and this is one of those times.

In the recent weeks, here's Gigi's life: 

An Agatha nomination for her locked-room mystery short story "The Hindi Houdini" 

Her combined book sales pushed her into Amazon's Top 100 Most Popular Authors ("briefly", she insists on saying)

The first book in the series stayed #1 for days on the Amazon Kindle Cozy and Women Sleuth categories, top 10 Mystery/Thriller/Suspense Kindle Books, and top 10 overall NOOK book sales. 

AND she got a Library Journal review: "Pandian’s second series entry sets a playful tone yet provides enough twists to keep mystery buffs engaged, too. The author streamlines an intricate plot....[and] brings a dynamic freshness to her cozy." – Library Journal

AND her first book, ARTIFACT, hit the USA today Bestseller list!

AND--Her newest book, PIRATE VISHNU was published from Henery. All in all, very very nice.  And--she cooks! As you will read.

Adventures in India and Indian Cooking 

                       with Gigi Pandian

     Gigi is currently celebrating the release of a new novel –and also news that her locked-room mystery short story “The Hindi Houdini” has been nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Short Story!

“Forget about Indiana Jones. Jaya Jones is swinging into action, using both her mind and wits to solve a mystery… Readers will be ensnared by this entertaining tale.”—RT Book Reviews

My new novel, PIRATE VISHNU, came out earlier this month, and I’ve been having a blast talking about India, where part of the book takes place. To shake things up here on Jungle Red today, I thought I’d share a story about India AND one of my favorite Indian food recipes – one that’s both delicious and easy.

I was born and raised in California, but my dad is from India, so I’ve had the opportunity to travel there several times. India can be an overwhelming country – it’s massively crowded, oppressively hot, and the foods are oh-so-spicy – but once you scratch the surface, it opens up its charms. The more times I visit, the more I want to return.

On my last visit in 2010, I was in the midst of drafting the second novel in my mystery series. As a follow-up to a treasure hunt that took Jaya Jones to the Highlands of Scotland, I was setting the new book in both San Francisco and the southern tip of India. (Yes, I picked a series premise well! A treasure hunt mystery series means I have no choice but to travel to fascinating places!)

I thought I had my twisty puzzle plot all figured out – until we arrived in India got on the open road along the south-western coast of the country.

  

Yes, that’s an elephant sharing the road with an autorickshaw (three-wheeled taxi), cars, motorcycles, and bikes!

Covering hundreds of miles on Indian roads to visit family from Trivandrum up to Bangalore, I knew that the experience would make its way into the book – although I didn’t yet realize how instrumental it would be to the plot. The colorful hand-painted trucks, the scents unleashed by the monsoon rains, and the confounding roads lacking street signs stirred up my imagination. When we were studying a map on the way to Kochi, the juxtaposition between the picture on the map and the reality we were experiencing hit me like a bolt of lightning. That moment gave me a plot twist that became central to the story.

Here’s the scoop about PIRATE VISHNU (the second book in the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery Series, following ARTIFACT):

A century-old treasure map of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast.

Sacred riches from India.

Two murders, one hundred years apart.

And a love triangle…

Historian Jaya Jones has her work cut out for her.

1906. Shortly before the Great San Francisco Earthquake, Pirate Vishnu strikes the San Francisco Bay. An ancestor of Jaya’s who came to the U.S. from India draws a treasure map…

PRESENT DAY. Over a century later, the cryptic treasure map remains undeciphered. From San Francisco to the southern tip of India, Jaya pieces together her ancestor’s secrets, maneuvers a complicated love life she didn’t count on, and puts herself in the path of a killer to restore a revered treasure.

More at: http://gigipandian.com/pirate-vishnu/

And now, here’s one of my favorite Indian recipes. It’s a variation on a classic dish – my spin on the dish was a happy accident I discovered when cooking one day while I was busy. I let the onions cook longer than I’d meant to, and they caramelized. Instead of ditching the onions, I went ahead with the recipe – and it turned out even more delicious than the original!

CARAMELIZED ONION DAHL

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup yellow split peas (or Indian yellow lentils, called toor dalh)

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp sea salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

¼ tsp cayenne pepper (or more to taste)

1 large onion, thinly sliced

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 tsp cumin seeds

DIRECTIONS

Rinse the yellow split peas, then cook them with 2 cups of water, turmeric, salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 45 minutes. Warm the olive oil in a skillet on medium heat and add the sliced onion and cumin seeds. Cook the onion slowly for the duration of the time the lentils are cooking. This will caramelize the onion, bringing out its natural sugars. Stir the onion mixture into the cooked lentils.

Thanks for having me on Jungle Reds today! Do you have a favorite dish that was inspired by a trip you’ve taken?

Connect with Gigi on her website http://gigipandian.com/ , Twitter https://twitter.com/GigiPandian, and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/GigiPandian.