BackLoving chicken, surviving the monsoon
Broilers, unadorned, may run cardboard close in flavour, but make the oven your friend and you'll be surprised what happens
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The monsoon rolls on, its thundery, cloudy progress across the subcontinent revitalizing life and disrupting it in equal measure. People tend to wax eloquent about the great rains, committing them to poetry and song and evoking general grandiloquence about their fury and relentlessness.
Not I.
After the first, admittedly pleasant whiff of red earth and driving rain, I am ready for sunny skies and normal life.
It isn’t the usual disruptions that irk me. I can live with the potholes and slush on the roads, the mould on the walls, the seepage around the windows and gloom of midday.
What I find hard to deal with is chicken.
You see, I am forced to eat far too much of India’s favourite bird in the monsoon. My favourite food, fish, is scarce. By decree, most of India’s fishing fleets are docked. By tradition, they do not venture into the stormy seas because this is when fish breed. Unfortunately, there are more Indians than ever before, and they are more prosperous than ever before, and a growing demand for fish, pushes many fishermen to violate decree and tradition.
So it was that my local fishwallah—moaning about what the monsoon does to his otherwise flourishing business—sold my family some red snapper and mackerel last week. What I saw in the belly of at least half the mackerel made me pause in my relentless quest for fish—abundant roe, meaning I was complicit in disrupting the cycle of renewal.
I have not ordered fish since.
The monsoon also disrupts my consumption of vegetarian food, salad and other greens. Salad disappears from the market, and if it does appear, I am queasy about the worms—made abundant by the rains, I would think—the type that wriggle into your brain and leave you, well, frothing at the mouth. I go easy, too, on pork and spinach, both known to harbour the same worms. This is a fecund time, and if life rises anew, it seems logical that the prolific worms will find added sustenance.
There’s mutton, of course, but really how much red meat can you consume, particularly after a month of Iftar feasting?
The answer, depressingly, is Gallus gallus domesticus, the domestic chicken, the inevitable fate of emerging India. I say inevitable because eating chicken is the preferred route to non-vegetarianism in societies that are largely not. There are no religious restrictions (that I know of) on eating the domestic descendent of the wild jungle fowl, and the broiler variety has spread to every corner of this vast land.
Just as man first emerged in Africa, the domestic chicken is thought to have spread to Africa and Europe from India. Certainly, the people of the Indus Valley kept chicken over 3,000 years ago.
The popularity of chicken, then, should not be surprising. It’s plentiful, cheaper than mutton, a traditional meat and healthier than most others. So what if the modern Indian broiler is bereft of taste? It may run cardboard close in flavour (or the lack thereof), but it is certainly possible to infuse chicken with some of the romance of the season.
I say this with confidence because I have lately tried out a variety of chicken entrées. Of course, you can fry chicken or turn out the old curries and (shudder) butter chicken, but my personal favourite is a good roast.
Broiler chicken cooks quickly and quite evenly, and because it lacks taste, it takes easily to a variety of flavours. My parents, fed up with their curries, were pleasantly surprised when oven-roasted chicken regularly popped up on their table on rainy days. It was easy to retrain their cook to make the oven her friend. I quickly learned that while they liked the falling-off-the-bone quality of my chicken and its varying taste, my parents missed their curry. I added a permutation to my chicken combinations by creating a curry in the oven. To see how, read the recipe below.
My final reason for consuming chicken is that I need to keep my weight under check, particularly now because I can no longer run or even walk rapidly.
Oh, yes, I blame the monsoon. When it was about to burst over the subcontinent a particular species of mosquito got excited and multiplied. One of them bit me, delivering to my bloodstream a virus akin to chikungunya, a nasty little bug that causes terribly painful joints. There is no cure, and the pain can last between two months and two years. I hobble along, my exercise routine put to an end almost overnight, taking care to focus on chicken and fruit, lest I become a blimp of inactivity.
Did I already mention that I hate the monsoon?
Slow-roasted monsoon chicken
Serves 6
Ingredients
1kg chicken (I used legs and thighs)
For the marinade
3 tsp sumac powder (if unavailable, eliminate)
4 tsp paprika powder
3 tsp coriander powder
2 tsp dried sage
1 tsp peppercorns (I used green peppercorns)
1 potato, sliced into large pieces
2 carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces
Half cup beer
For the sauté
4 cloves
2 large cardamoms
1 star anise
2 onions, finely sliced
2 tomatoes, chopped
4 tsp ginger-garlic paste
2 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tbsp olive oil
Method
Marinate the chicken for at least an hour with the potatoes, carrots, spices and beer, and then place in an oven-proof dish.
In a saucepan, heat the olive oil and drop in the cloves, cardamom and star anise. When they swell and release aroma, add the onion. Fry till translucent, add the ginger-garlic paste and toss for a couple of minutes. Add vinegar if it sticks. Stir in the red chilli and cumin powders. Mix well and toss. When the masalas start to adhere, add the tomatoes and sauté for a minute.
Pour the onion-tomato sauté over the chicken. Mix well, cover and place in a preheated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for an hour. Uncover, baste with liquid released by the chicken and increase the heat to 200 degrees Celsius for 20-30 minutes. Turn the chicken over every 10 minutes, until the onion-tomatoes have clearly broken down and thickened into a curry.
This is a column on easy, inventive cooking from a male perspective. Samar Halarnkar also writes the fortnightly science column Frontier Mail for Mint and is the author of the book The Married Man’s Guide to Creative Cooking And Other Dubious Adventures.
Also Read | Samar’s previous Lounge columns
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