Punjabi-style Chicken

Description
This time it’s “Chicken-a-la-Route79”. This will cook enough for 4 hungry adults.

Ingredients



 * 750g skinless, boneless chicken thighs. Do not use chicken breast; it is dry and bland and the end-result will be really crap. Goodness knows why chicken breast is so expensive here in UK - it’s the worst, most tasteless, pointless part of the chicken. The thigh or leg actually has the tastie and is a better texture when cooked - and yet it’s a lot cheaper than breast! Bizzare hey? Not sure I understand this logic - but I’m not complaining!
 * 4 small/medium onions, peeled
 * 4 peppers - two large green, 2 small/medium red, washed and de-seeded.
 * 2 tins of peeled plum tomatoes
 * 3 tsp haldi (turmeric)
 * 2 tsp salt
 * 3-4 tsp garam masala
 * 2 heaps ground-dhania (coriander)
 * pulped garlic, ginger and Chili. Use plenty of garlic and ginger for this much Chicken.
 * Also - not shown in the picture is a bunch of fresh coriander. I used some frozen, chopped coriander - which was prepared weeks ago by moi from several bunches of fresh coriander from the grocer shop.

Directions

 * 1) Chop all the onions into coarse-ish strips.
 * 2) Chop all the peppers into bite-sized chunks.
 * 3) Pour a tin of plum tomatoes into the blender.
 * 4) Add one of the chopped green peppers. Give it a good 15 second zap.
 * 5) Add a bunch of fresh coriander leaf - stalks and all. Zap for another 15 seconds or so.
 * 6) Then add the pre-pulped garlic, ginger and chillis, with the second tin of tomatoes - and zap it for another 10 seconds. #At this point you should have a thick dark green-ish sauce - which you should then pour into a large bowl.
 * 7) Then add the powdered spices to the sauce bowl. Don’t be put off by the colour of the sauce at this point - a dark dirty-green swamp type sauce - when it cooks it will go a wonderfully aromatic rich reddish-brown!
 * 8) Stir in the ground spices thoroughly. It was at this point that little MissRoute79 came running into kitchen and pleaded with me if she could help me. So - I let her stir it around. (She had to stand on a foot-stool to reach!)
 * 9) You also need to get the onions cooking out now. Put plenty of oil into a large cooking pan - and stir fry the onions until they start to become translucentish. This might take around 10 mins.
 * 10) Then add the remaining chunks of red and green pepper - and stir fry until the onions have started to go goldenish brown.
 * 11) At this point - pour in the chopped chicken thighs - and stir fry carefully until the chicken has turned from slimy-pink to rubbery-white.
 * 12) At this point you should pour the spicy sauce mixture over the chicken
 * 13) Give the pot a good, thorough stir - ensuring all the chicken is covered in the sauce. Do this whilst the flame is on really high - so that eventually the whole pot starts to boil nearly fiercely!
 * 14) Now lower the flame to the lowest you can go - and place a lid on the pot - leaving a little gap for steam to escape - and the sauce to reduce. Leave it slow-simmering like this for about 1 hour - coming back to stir it around every 15 minutes or so.
 * 15) Then take a taste of the sauce with a spoon - to test if there’s enough salt or spices. If not - add some more salt and garam masala - and keep tasting until it tastes perfect.

Recipe by Route 79
From London: By a British, European, 2nd-Generation Indian. Probably confused - but proud to be them all! Half of my journey to and from work is a 20-30 minute bus ride: London Bus Route 79 - between Alperton in West London and Kingsbury in North West London. I very frequently get pissed-off and frustrated waiting around in the DARK, WET and COLD - waiting for the 79 to turn up. But I have to be eternally grateful for the quality thinking time I get to myself.