027. Chicken Kavarma.
STORY TIME...
When I was a new green student (university student), my mother decided, that her child must eat home made food, because he can't cook (to be fair, she was right). So she started making different things for me. One of them is the great recipe 006 - Sausage cake. The other one is this. Chicken kavarma. She have never made kavarma before, and I loved that meal ever since she decided to start cooking it for me.
OK, this is a bit tricky, but not too much.
So here are the main ingredients:
Throw the rice to boil up. Best choice - dry non sticky rice. I used the last remains of the crap rice I already had, but if you are starting this a new - you want non sticky rice, and when it's done - you want it dry. All the liquid needs to be from the sauce...
Anyways, while the rice is boiling, chop the chicken to a bite size chunks.
After that, chop fairly finely some onions, carrots and red, repeat, red pepper. You don't want the flavor of the green one. You want the sweetness of the red one.
Then mushrooms. I love mushrooms, so I use a lot of them...
Now, the standard recipe is using grated tomatoes. I lack the will to grate tomatoes, so I just chopped them.
By that point the rice should be prepared for a while. So just use a pot and throw in the chicken with a bit of oil.
When the meat is almost done, add the onions, mushrooms, carrots and the pepper...
Now, add some liquid and cover up. Leave it to boil for about 15 minutes. You want everything in the pot to fully cook. You also want to stir every now and then. The amount of stuff in the pot will reduce massively, almost to half... So whenever the carrots are soft and everything is cooked, you add the tomatoes.
Keep steering and let it boil. The tomatoes will release a lot of liquid.
What we, meaning Bulgarians, usually do to reduce the liquid is add a bit of flour. It thickens the tomato sauce. So with the flour I also added some spices. Spicy red chilly pepper powder, savory, basil and black pepper. Also, salt...
Add some hot water to that mix, stir it well and add it to the pot...
Boil it for the next... 10 minutes... You want the flour to be cooked. Raw flour can lead to stomach pain and digestion issues in general.
OK, there are different ways people here plate the Kavarma. Some make a ring of rice and add the kavarma in the middle, similar to what I did in recipe 013 - Chicken Curry with Rice and Vegetables. Other like to put the rice on the bottom of the plate and cover it up with the kavarma, similar to most Chinese recipes, like 021 - Chicken Zucchini Stir Fry. I just like to put the rice on the side and cover only part of it with the kavarma...
Now, this thing can go through some changes...
You want garlic? Add garlic, no problem. TBH I just forgot.
The original recipe uses leek with the onions. The leek will add a lot of liquid to the mix. The reason I didn't use leek is, that I couldn't find any in the store today.
My mother don't eat mushrooms, so she uses none when she cooks for herself.
There is also pork kavarma, that is almost the same recipe, it just uses pork, and it cooks it a bit longer than the chicken. The pork meat needs more cooking.
It can go through changes. Just make sure you follow the main skeleton of the recipe. The meat, when done add the mushrooms/vegetable mix, after 15 minutes add the tomatoes, then flour with spices. 10 minutes to cook the flour and you are done.
I have no idea what I'm going to cook tomorrow. I have a choice between 3 dishes, so I just need to chose one...
PS: I'm really fucking proud of myself... I almost had a feeling of bliss when I ate this.