Thursday, April 22, 2010

Recipe : Chicken Cafreal - Goan Dish

I've tried a lot of Chicken Cafreal recipes from different cookbooks and websites, but none of them has come close to matching the awesome preparation at Florentines in Goa.

I recently discovered this website for Goan cooking and its quickly becoming my first option for Goan recipes surpassing my Maria Teresa Menezes and Usgaokar + Sardesai - Traditional Taste of Goa. It just doesn't have as many recipes - quantity (yet), but the quality is finger licking good. The recipe for Chicken Cafreal on Goan Food Recipes came the closest to what I was hoping for.

I cooked half a kilo chicken with very minor alterations. If you want to cook a kilo, then check the quantities out from the original location

Ingredients:
1/2 kilo chicken
4 - 5 green chillies
8 -12 stalks of coriander leaves.
1 inch piece of ginger
8-9 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp khuskhus (poppy seeds)
5 peppercorns (kali mirch)
1" cinnamon (dalchini)
1 tsp cumin seeds (jeera)
1/2 tsp turmeric powder (haldi)
2 tsps tamarind paste
4 - 6 cloves (laung)
1 tsp ginger garlic paste

1 tsp oil
1 tsp butter

Method:
Clean chicken, pat dry and apply ginger garlic paste and keep for awhile, when you are prepapring the rest of the ingredients.

Tip:
Poppy seeds don't grind very well in modern mixis, they need the heavy grinding stones. So before putting them into the mixi, I like to soak the poppy seeds in a tsp or 2 of hot water and then pound it in my mortar/pestle.

Grind all the ingredients except the chicken, oil and butter to a fine paste. Marinate the chicken in this mixture for at least 4 hours. I prefer 24 hours (marinate one night, cook the next)

Heat the oil and add the marinated chicken to the pan.
As the chicken begins to cook, add the butter (you can skip this, but it is what gives the dish its flavour)
Cook till done.
Serve with salad and pau bread (I used multigrain bread in the picture below)

7 comments:

sangeeta said...

It looks yummy...though i cook a similar recipe
( the name is new for me ) but the next time i make it with khuskhus i will follow this recipe to the T n will tell you.

Kim said...

This is a traditional Goan dish, would be interesting to see how it evolved before arriving in Benaras :)

Cheeky Mom said...

Super yum! Must try. Btw u shld go to bernado's in galleria mall in gurgaon. Really nice goan food and great people!

Kim said...

Landed in Bernado's within a week of landing in Delhi - I needed a good "pork" fix. LOL.

Their menu is limited but the food is really yum!

Unknown said...

It is Jevaann or Jevonn and not Jovaan.The best cafreal I ever tasted was from Hotel Caravella,right on Panaji Jetti opp.Tourist Hotel,Panaji.But the cook who made it,left Goa soon.This was somewhere in 1980 or so.Unfortunately I don't know his name and where he went.But 100 per cent he was Goan Catholic! I could not find such tasty cafreal till date!

simon said...

it arrived in wiesbaden, germany. not banares obly. there is one paste of all the pastes. add oil or butter only - nobody finds ever out...
KAMA'S chicken cafreal

Anonymous said...

Hiru Naik - I believe that person was none other than the person who opened the famous restaurant Florentine. Florentine is the one and only restaurant serving the best chicken cafreal. So dont think he left goa :)

Cheers
P.S: Im still searching for the magical ingredient or magical procedure to make my own chicken cafreal similar to Florentine.

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