Pocket full of Spices: Minced Chicken Ball Curry a.k.a. Kofta Curry

Have you ever got tired of eating keema curry out of minced meat. No!!! then you are a one lucky girl. Trust me, last week when the husband brought chicken keema from grocery, I was like, please give me a break. All I did for past few months with ground meat was to make a keema curry and now got so bored up. So, I wanted to try something new but has to be easy. I liked the Kofta curry recipe from Bong Mom Cookbook, http://www.bongcookbook.com/2009/06/kofta-curry-and-then.html and wanted to give it a try. Trust me, it is not that difficult and time consuming as it looks. I followed the recipe with few modifications, actually I meant more short cuts. But it turned out to be real delight. So go ahead and give it a try.

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

Minced or Ground Chicken - 1lb
Onion- 2 medium coarsely chopped
Tomato-1 medium chopped
Ginger and garlic paste- 2 tbsp
Cashews- 10-12 (Ground to powder)
Garam masala powder- 1 tsp
Cilantro- small bunch chopped
Green Chillies- 4-5 (finely chopped)

How to make it

Mix the chicken with onions, ginger-garlic paste (1 tbsp), cashew powder, garam masala powder (1 tsp), cumin powder (1 tsp), coriander powder (1 tsp) and half of the chopped green chillies and mix well. Make balls out of it (I did 20 balls). Leave it for about an hour.

Heat oil in a pan and temper it with dry red chilli, whole garam masala, add the onions and fry till transluscent. Add the chopped tomatoes, saute for a minute, add turmeric (1/2 tsp), cumin powder (1tsp), add the remaining ginger - garlic paste (I grated it directly into the pan). Saute for few minutes. (I was in real rush so I did not make the paste of spices in yogurt, you can do it. But it tasted good nonetheless).

Add 1 cup of milk+ 1 cup of water to the mix. Bring it to boil and then let it simmer. Add the koftas or meat balls and let it simmer for 8 -10 minutes. (Again, I did not fry the balls but I don't think the taste was compromised. It tasted really well. Also, without frying you can make it a tad more healthy).

Add salt to taste and a bit of sugar. Towards the end of the 8-10 minutes cooking time, add the chopped cilantro. The gravy I made was little runny, but if you want to make it more thick, you can remove the meatballs at this point and reduce the gravy to your desired consistency. It will look like this.