Balti Tamarind Chicken

This has been adapted into a restaurant style from the book "Balti Cooking" by Shehzad Husain which is a tradional recipe for 4 - 6 persons. Balti does not describe a single recipe but rather a style of cooking and has been described as a delicately spiced stir fry. Many recipes, however, do not appear to follow this principle and maybe all they really have in common is being served in a small balti bowl.

Ingredients

For 1	Continued...
1 tbspn oil	2 tbspn tamarind juice
1 tbspn dessicated coconut	1 tbspn tomato purée
2 tspn white poppy seeds	½ tspn sugar
1 tspn extra hot chilli powder	¼ tspn salt
½ tspn ground coriander	1 portion precooked chicken
¼ tspn ground cumin	1 tomato
¼ tspn onion seeds	1 tspn green chilli
¼ tspn fenugreek	freshly chopped coriander to garnish
300 ml c41 curry base sauce

Preparation

Cut the tamarind block into enough small pieces to fill 1 tbspn and cover with boiling water, mash, and allow to infuse for 15 min, then pass through a sieve to remove any pips and large pieces.
Cut the tomato into 8 pieces.
Deseed the chilli and chop finely.

Cooking

Heat the oil in a wok or heavy pan and fry the coconut, poppy seeds, chilli powder, ground coriander, cumin, onion seeds and fenugreek for 1 min, adding a little c41 base sauce if necessary to prevent burning.
Stir in the tamarind, tomato purée, sugar, salt and 80 ml of c41 base sauce and cook for 3 min, stirring regularly, gradually adding c41 base sauce as needed to prevent drying.
Add the chicken, tomato pieces, green chilli and 80 ml of c41 base sauce and cook for 3 min, stirring regularly, gradually adding c41 base sauce as needed to prevent drying although the final sauce should be on the 'dry side'.

Serving

Serve with rice and garnish with freshly chopped coriander.

Notes

Tamarind block can be purchased from many supermarkets (eg ASDA) and any asian store.
This also works well with c43 base sauce.

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