Dum Ka Chicken / Dum Ka Murg

Easter is here and we are planning for a short trip to the beach on this Easter holiday. My husband's cousin is here and he will also be moving back to Abidjan with his family after 2 months. Finally...I will have some family life to mingle with. It will be splendid!!!

As for my weigh loss project, I have finally shredded some valuable kilos.It felt so good to be fit into my old dresses again. I follow my diet plans so ardently that once my husband became very worried and said that I should not make myself sick. He was so surprised to see me having so much control over my meals.

But weekends are meant for breaking the rules and there is absolutely no guilt in but bending the rules a bit when I abide by them all the other days. So this Sunday, I made this Dum Ka Chicken, an excellent Hyderabadi Chicken dish famous for its taste and flavor. But I like Dum Ka Chicken totally for a different reason, because its so freakingly easy to make. Just mix every thing, put it into the oven and it will be done in 15 minutes. I love love love this kind of recipes, where everyone will wonder about its tedious method, and I will giggle secretly accepting all the credits. Ha Haaa!!!!

Dum Ka Chicken
Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 4 leg pieces of chicken / 500gm chicken with bone
• 1 medium onion - saute
• 3 cloves of garlic - paste
• 1 inch stick of ginger - paste
• 2 green chilies
• 1 tbsp poppy seeds
• 6-7 cashew nuts
• 2 tsp melon seeds
• 1 small bunch coriander leaves
• 1/4 cup thick yogurt - whisked
• 7-8 strands of saffron
• 2 tbsp warm milk
• juice of 1/2 lime
• 2 tsp rose water
• 1 tbsp garam masala powder (I use homemade garam masala. It includes - cinnamon stick, cloves, cardamom, black cardamom, mace, nutmeg, black peppercorns and dry red chili. Dry roast them and grind them to a fine powder.)
• 2 tbsp ghee
• 2 tsp oil

Method:

• Heat oil in a kadai and add the sliced onions.
• Cook till it becomes golden brown. Put off the flame and let them come to the room temerature.
• Grind the onion to a fine paste with green chilies, ginger and garlic.
• In warm water soak the poppy seeds, cashew nuts and melon seeds for 15 minutes. Then grind them to a fine smooth paste.
• Put the saffron in the warm milk and let it soak for 10 minutes.
• Now in a bowl marinate the chicken with onion, ginger - garlic paste, poppy seed and cashew nuts paste, salt, whisked yogurt, chopped coriander leaves,salt, lime juice, rose water, garam masala powder, saffron dissolved millk and ghee / clarified butter.
• Let it marinate for 1 hour.
• After marination add 1/4 cup water to it and mix evenly. If you wan to eat Dum Ka Chicken with rice, add a little more water to make the gravy a little runny.
• Process No.1 - Put everything in the pressure cooker. Put cover and put it on a very low flame. After 10 minutes put a tawa on the flame and put the pressure cooker on it. Cook the chicken for another 10 minutes or until the chicken becomes soft from inside.
• Process No. 2 - I use this process. Put everything in a baking dish and cover that with an aluminium foil. Bake it for 15 minutes on 300F or until the chicken becomes soft from inside.
• After switching off the microwave / putting off the flame let the cooker / baking dish stand in that way for 10 minutes more and then serve with roti / chapati / plain steamed rice / biriyani.