Chicken Vindaloo

So here's the thing with travel. Your kitchen can travel to anywhere in the world. You can travel through the food you're cooking, through the spices, through the techniques and flavours. We're not in Goa right now, but our kitchen is in Goa. We just don't have the beaches, or the weather, or the swimming pools. We have the food, and the food is very evocative. You've got the food. I haven't. I've got mata paneer we've been recycling since Monday. Today I'm making chicken vindaloo. There is a riot of flavours happening here. The sourness, and the little tinge of sweetness, and the spiciness. It just captures your mouth with flavours. People of Goa, be kind to me on this video, please. Last year we went to Goa, and I had the most amazing Goan food. I actually wanted to see what Goan vindaloo tasted like, and if it has any similarities with English vindaloo. Surprise, surprise, none at all. Goa was ruled by Portuguese for a very, very long time, for around 450 years. And so when you go to Goa, you see this real mix of Indo-Portuguese architecture, Indo-Portuguese food. Let's come back to vindaloo. Or should I go like, imagine someone called Mr. Vindaloo. No more Mr. Vindaloo. No, so Mr. Vindaloo was actually born in Portugal. There Mr. Vindaloo was called, I'm going to butcher this, Carne Vendialios. Meat cooked in wine vinegar and garlic. Lots of wine vinegar and garlic. And the reason why they did that is because they needed food that could last on long ship journeys. 16th century, Mr. Carne Vendialios comes to Goa, India. They find out that the main ingredient, wine vinegar, was not available in India. But Indian cooks, they were very clever. They thought, okay, what have we got that can act as a substitute? So they created this vinegar from toddy, which comes from the sap of palm trees, and it's a naturally fermented drink. And they made vinegar from that and used that instead of the wine vinegar. But when Portuguese came, they also brought chilies to India. So there was this new ingredient kicking around. So the Indian cooks also used chilies in their dish, which basically became Vindaloo. British came and then they took this dish to the UK and it became Vindaloo. That is the secret life of Carne Vendialios. It's amazing what happens to recipes and how they carry all this history about them. So today the Vindaloo that I will be making, we will add chilies and it will be hot, but that won't be the crowning feature. I've got it all written down. Off to the spice shelf. Cloves, cinnamon, pepper, mustard seeds. Made with my babies. So the key for Vindaloo is marination. You need to marinate whatever meat you're using. I will be using chicken. Step one, I will douse my chilies and garlic and ginger in this coconut vinegar. So I tested lots of different vinegars to replicate toddy vinegar. But if you can find coconut vinegar, that would go nicely. I've got about half a cup here. We will be using Kashmiri red chilies for it because Kashmiri red chilies are beautifully red and smoky. It's your personal preference how hot you want your Vindaloo. I will be adding seven chilies. That's quite hot for me. You do you. And then take some garlic. Just refer to the measurements given in the written recipe. And some ginger. Cut it up into little pieces. And cut up your garlic into little slices as well. So we want all this ginger and garlic and chili to be like drowned in vinegar. Get a nice mix. So I'll let this sit now. I've got my little pan here. And I will dry toast the spices very quickly. We need two parts of a finger long cinnamon. A snap. And when I put them in my pan as well, I will snap it further. What we want is extracting maximum flavour from these whole spices. So we will dry toast them. So you're going to grind these spices once they're dry toasted, right? If someone was to use just already powdered cinnamon or really powdered pepper cloves. Nah, don't do that. No, no, no. The aroma and the flavour of spices when you grind them from whole is completely different. Ground spices, because they've been sitting on for a long time, they don't have the kind of aroma or the flavour that you will get when you will freshly grind your spices. If you want to make a good bindaloo, grind your spices. Black peppercorns. A few cloves. Mustard seeds. And lastly, some cumin seeds. How do you know when your spices are properly toasted? So you start smelling them. In this case, I'm focusing my attention on cumin. When cumin starts browning a little bit, I will remove them. Don't toast them to death. What I'm trying to say is don't burn them. Okay, so these are toasted. I'm just going to put them in the pestle and mortar. As you can see, I have the world's smallest pestle and mortar because I broke my... Is this pestle? This is the pestle. I'd say that's the mortar. What is a pestle and what is a mortar? That's got to be a mortar, right? Would that not be a pestle? Oh man, I was completely wrong. Mortar is the bowl. Pestle is the stick. Yet again. Okay, so that's my dry spices done. Right, could you get me the silpatta, please? You know so much about pestle and mortars. What's this called? Me? Yeah. Butter. So this is the sil and this is the butter. Silpatta. You know, I'm doing this here and I did the spices in the pestle and mortar. But you can just do it all together in whatever you use to make pastes. If you are working with chillies, oil your hands. Then you can wash your hands off and the chilli will wash off. It's quite cathartic when this thing becomes smooth paste. Oh, for f**k's sake. Got a splash back. It is really stupid that I wore this. All these smells remind me of Goa, man. That is some labour of love. You see the colour is so brilliantly red. Okay, so I'm just going to put all of this ginger, garlic and chilli paste into this jar and then I will mix in the rest of the vinegar. Also, our spices will go in now. Tiny bit of turmeric. And then just add your salt in as well. And that is your lovely marinade for your vindaloo. Don't even try that. It just smells like Goa. So I've got my chicken here. You want this paste very nicely mixed into the pieces of chicken. So I'm going to do something which I don't really like doing. Pop it into the fridge and let it soak in all the flavours overnight. If you can't do it overnight, do it for a few hours. That's really important. And this is the chicken that was marinated last night and it's ready to go. Off to the hob. Follow me. So a vindaloo isn't actually that saucy a curry, right? There are a lot of recipes that use water. Some use a lot of water, some use a splash of water. But I have come across some really Goan recipes in which they use no water at all. So I've got some oil here. Put it in the pot. We'll just take a couple of Kashmiri red chillies. But I will deseed them this time. I'll just break them with my hand. And to this, I will now add chopped onions. Now we will lightly brown the onions. Just like a whip of browning. So when the onions brown, we'll just add our marinated chicken into it. And that's it. The vindaloo will cook itself. Okay, so look. This is browning. This is what I meant by lightly brown. And now, I will just add the chicken into the pot. Now we will cover and cook this on low flame. And the chicken will release its water. It actually will cook fairly quickly because it's been marinated. And let's do it. It's about half an hour. Mmm. Now we're just going to balance it with some gur. Jaggery. Gur? Yeah, that's the Hindi for jaggery. It's your preference how you want to balance. You really need to find how much sour and sweet you want. I'm just going to add this much. It's kind of like one teaspoon of jaggery. Using jaggery or brown sugar will give it a nice depth of flavor. But yeah, just taste it. See if it needs more jaggery or sugar. Add more. Like it should be not sickly sweet at all. It should be more sour than it is sweet. But there should be just little rounding sweetness to it. Mmm. Spicy. Sour. And then just when you think you've had everything, there's like this nice kind of like sweet whiff from jaggery. This is lovely and this is done. So it's taken me about 35 minutes to cook this chicken but use your own timing because I'm cooking on a gas. I'm cooking in a really good cast iron pot. Work out your own timing. It's taken me 35 minutes to thoroughly cook the chicken. Chicken vindaloo is ready. There you go. Try it once. You know, you've always had saucy vindaloo. Try this one. Right. Let's give this vindaloo a try. Bon appétit. There is a riot of flavors happening here. It's so very well balanced. The sourness and the little tinge of sweetness and the spiciness. It just captures your mouth with flavors. Mmm. Yeah. It's just beautiful. It's really nice. I'm very happy with this. I'm not saying that this is the only way you make a vindaloo. I just want to make that very clear. This is how I make vindaloo and I can only make what I make. That's it. That's a cut on vindaloo. And it's a cut before we go to India. So the next time we see you, we're going to be in India. We're going to be in hot weather on the hustling and bustling streets and we've got some amazing things coming up. You have no clue what's going to hit you. Eating chillies doesn't make you a man. But eating good food makes you human. Now it's up to you. Giving you some food for thought.