TOMATO CHICKEN IN MICROWAVE

 

MY LOVE HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH CHICKEN!

If you are not a vegetarian or off meat; including chicken in your regular diet is highly recommended; I say this in full sense. I believe in the goodness of  chicken so much that I cling to it; although on several occasions I wished to quit it! I find this island's chicken too soft and perfect for Oriental preparations; I personally dislike South Asian CHICKEN CURRIES having broken pieces in them. Let me explain the problem clearly. In our kind of chicken preparations, if we are not cooking it well; spices do not penetrate inside the flesh. If we cook less; the meat does not taste good; all the spices stick to the top layer of the meat! At least in my case; an Indian or South Asian style meat curry never tastes good if not marinated well or slow cooked. Back in Kolkata; in many mid-level eateries; say in the eateries of the suburbs, they boil a big amount of boneless chicken. Then, the boiled meat is cooked in different spices and served to the customers. A truth does not become a lie if anyone denies a fact! You cannot avoid the neighbourhood eateries or the roadside stalls back in Kolkata. They have to do the business and the common man have the right to certain amount of pleasure as per their ability! I do not have the craze to eat out that started during the college days! I enjoy sitting in an eatery after a long walk or work! Until my 12th standard; I did not know what "fine dining" means!

YES, I CAN COOK!

May be because I can cook, I no more crave for visiting a restaurant to have stuffs I think I can cook! I would not want to have badshahi chicken or mutton masala or paneer butter masala sitting in a restaurant! I would definitely want to have an authentic kaali dal in a Punjabi outlet or an appam or bisebelle bath in a South Indian outlet or a kangkong sambal in a local eatery. How much I do them at home, I cannot make that perfect naan, kaali dal or an appam, idli, bisebelle bath, oriental greens! I mean I do not understand why a Bengali goes to a Bengali restaurant to eat luchi, kosha mangsho, ilish, posto! We should inspire the non-Bengali speaking world to go there! However, for long I wished to visit Kewpie's; it has an old charm. I may not be interested visiting Prince or Kasturi anymore. At this age I would not want to wander in Free School Street alone, sit in an eatery alone and have food. I wonder why I do not have such hesitations here; I am so comfortable sitting in any food stall in the island. I think its lot about the environment & culture of the place I am in. At this time, sitting at any eatery or food court is prohibited for the next few months. My brother will be happy at this news as he thinks I roam around unnecessarily! People will be working from home now until further notice which never bars me from exercising my freedom, so I am not irritated. I just wish to meet our baby, at least know exactly when we can. With the island's border almost closed, fear grips in!

WHAT IS THIS TOMATO CHICKEN IN MICROWAVE?

Life must go on; this is what many of us are telling to our scared selves. Last year too I chanted the same! Then, things were not so fearful in India last year and our son was at home with us. His university is very particular about their safety, rules & regulations; yet fear does not leave me! On one such beautiful day, last year May when we were together as a family; I prepared this SPICY TOMATO CHICKEN for us. I pretty much do MICROWAVE COOKING, specially when I am caught up with many things at a time. I cook my kebabs & kofta in the microwave to save on oil! If you follow the picture wise steps of this CHICKEN RECIPE; you can see I have used Everest's Tandoori Chicken Masala in the marination. Together with the tomato and potato, the curry was really awesome. None of the son's dorm rooms are yet equipped for self cooking; else I would have insisted him to cook such NON VEGETARIAN FOOD; he loves. I specially love the light textured curry we get when we cook a chicken in a frill free manner. If not a simple chicken curry with potatoes like this TOMATO CHICKEN IN MICROWAVE; I prefer an Oriental style Chicken!

INGREDIENTS :

CHICKEN : 1 KG 

POTATO : 2 MEDIUM SIZED

TOMATO : 1 BIG

ONION PASTE : 2-3 TBSP

GINGER EXTRACT : 1 TBSP

GARLIC EXTRACT : 2 TBSP OR USE 1 TBSP OF CRUSHED GARLIC

TANDOORI MASALA : 2 TBSP [I USE EVEREST'S]

RED CHILLI POWDER : 11/2 TBSP

TURMERIC POWDER : 1 TSP

LEMON JUICE : 3-4 TBSP

SALT : AS REQUIRED

OIL : 2-3 TBSP

PROCEDURE :

We will wash the medium cut chicken pieces very well. We will take them in a microwave proof bowl! 

We will marinate the chicken with the salt, oil, lemon juice, ginger & garlic extracts, onion paste, tandoori masala, red chilli & turmeric powders!

We will keep it covered for marination at least 1:45 hours to 2 hours! We will wash, chop and add the tomatoes thereafter!

We had cooked the chicken, covered at 300*C for 12 minutes! 

At this stage, I felt one bowl was not enough to hold and cook 1kg chicken. I had split the content into two bowls. I had peeled, washed, cut each potato into 4 pieces and added to the chicken. 

I had mixed well the content in each bowl. We will cook the chicken in two turns.

We will then cover cook the chicken, one bowl at a time at 450*C for 14 minutes. We will take the bowl out and give a stir!

We will again cover cook each bowl at 900*C for 13-14 minutes! We should be done!

We will have it hot with a variety of bread including toasts & buns or with piping hot steamed rice! You can see, on that day we had aam dal / mango lentil curry, raw papaya & potato curry / aloo paper dalna, mulo chechki / cooked shredded radish!