Chicken recipes: Chicken Curry Kapitan

Chicken recipes series

Chicken Curry Kapitan is probably The Food Critic’s favourite curry since it always evoke such good memories of his granny’s wonderful nyonya food. When it comes to curry, though I have all the recipes, I’m just too lazy short of time to get all the ingredients and blend it into a paste. Heck, we have modern packaged curry pastes after all!

Anyway, we can never find a really good packaged chicken curry kapitan paste so I went to my most favourite convenient spice stall at the wet market and asked her to pack for me the blended curry paste. I don’t know about anywhere else but in Penang, at most big wet markets like the one in Jelutong, we have a stall selling blended spices which you can buy so you don’t have to blend it yourself. Pure convenience if you asked me.

So, I took the easy way out to cook my chicken curry kapitan and at the same time, used some of the paste for my curried baked chicken breast. Heheheh…that’s right. Two dishes using one same ingredient but two different methods of cooking.

AND

Let me start with the:

Chicken Curry Kapitan Recipe

Ingredients

1/2 chicken, chopped into small pieces

1 tbsp light soy sauce

2 tbsp dark soy sauce

10 kaffir lime leaves

1 tbsp tamarind, (soak the tamarind in about 1/2 cup of warm water for the juice)

dash of sugar

dash of salt

Curry paste containing the following blended ingredients:

10 red chilies (or more if you prefer it to be spicier)

2 stalks lemon grass

small piece, about thumb-size fresh turmeric

5 shallots

1 small piece, about thumb-size ginger

1 small piece, about thumb-size galangal

4 candlenuts (soaked to soften first)

1/4 tsp cinnamon powder

1/2 tsp belacan (fermented shrimp paste)

Instructions

1. Season the chicken with the light and dark soy sauce.

2. Heat up the wok with some cooking oil and then stir fry the chicken till it is partially cooked (about 70% cooked).

3. Remove the chicken and you will notice there’s some leftover oil. DO NOT throw it away. Use it for the curry.

4. Now get your curry ingredients ready…

5. Heat up the oil and sautée the curry paste until fragrant. Then pour the tamarind juice over a strainer into the paste.

6. Continue to sautée until the juice is almost dried. Add salt and sugar to your taste. Test, if it is not sour enough, add more tamarind juice. If it is not salty enough, add more salt. Add the sugar to balance it out so usually a dash of it is enough or up to 1 tsp.

7. When the paste is almost dried up, add the kaffir lime leaves. Remember to scoop up about 4 tbsp of the paste and set aside for the Curried Baked Chicken Breast.

8. Then, add the chicken and stir to make sure it is well coated in the curry paste. Stir fry the chicken in curry paste until the chicken is completely cooked, about 15 to 20 minutes. Always cook over medium to low heat to avoid burning the curry.

9. Once cooked, remove from heat and serve warm with rice.

This chicken recipes post is just too long so I will post up the Curried Baked Chicken Breast Recipes separately.

Recipes...

Simple fish curry with okra...

Chicken recipes: Simple stir-fried chicken...

Chicken recipes: Stir-fried minced chicken and vegetables for lunch...

Chicken breast recipes: Japanese Sukiyaki Soup...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.