Picking up on the theme from last week, of time and developing flavour, this week I am sharing with you a curry chicken that took, wait for it, 1 hour and 22 minutes to cook. In this case, it wasn’t just about the flavour but the style/ method of cooking.
We differentiate between a dry curry and one with gravy by calling it bunjal. For the uninitiated, the method of cooking a bunjal type of curry means to cook it slowly in its own juices until all the liquid dries out. What you are left with is meat or poultry coated with the spice paste with which it was cooked. There is no gravy.
There are certain dishes and things that I am always interested in learning different ways in which they are cooked, such as, curry chicken, fried rice, roast chicken, bakes, dhal, breads and rolls, green plantains and the use of coconuts. Therefore, when I saw creative and YouTube content creator Imran Ali’s thumbnail photo: ‘Chicken Masala – No Water Added’, I knew I was going to try making the dish. With his roots firmly planted in Bangladeshi cuisine, the curry caught my eye because the photo showed the chicken coated with a thick sauce. I was curious as to how this bhuna style of cooking was different from our bunjal.