Chicken/Mutton with Poppy Seed Paste

It has begun raining heavily in Bombay and I wasted the last few days debating/mulling over what I should call this dish.My mum and I were watching a cooking programme on a Bengali channel, the food was Awadhi cuisine; mutton/chicken pasanda, korma, rezala were some of the dishes which featured on the show. It obviously evoked our interest and mum decided to adapt one of the dishes.
Since it is an adaptation I have had a tough time giving it a name. One thing that I noticed was almost all the dishes had more or less the same ingredients, so giving it a name makes it that much more difficult;  anyway what is in a name? Wasn’t it Shakespeare who said that a rose with any other name would smell as sweet, so here is the recipe. My mum used chicken in the following recipe, however you can replace it with mutton.

Ingredients:

• 1kg chicken
• ½ cup yoghurt
• 2 big onions
• One tablespoon ginger paste
• One teaspoon garlic paste
• 2 teaspoons poppy seed paste
•  One teaspoon coriander and cumin seed mix powder
• A little turmeric powder
• A little Kashmiri red chilli powder
• One green cardamom, 3 cloves and a small piece of cinnamon.
• ½ teaspoon nutmeg powder.
• 3 tablespoons cooking oil of your choice.
• Salt to taste.

Method:

• Cut and clean the chicken. You may cut it into pieces of your choice, however medium size pieces would be preferable.
• Beat the yoghurt and add it to the chicken. Mix well and keep it aside for some time.
• While the chicken is marinating, grind the onions to a paste.
• Now add the onion paste, poppy seed paste, ginger paste, garlic paste, turmeric powder, chilli powder, coriander and cumin mix powder to the chicken which was marinating in the yoghurt. Mix well.If you want a white gravy then drop the red chilli powder and use chopped green chillies instead.
• Heat three tablespoons oil in a vessel of your choice.
• Add the chicken mixture and stir well.
• Cover and cook on low flame. Stir intermittently.
•  When it releases water add salt to taste.Mix well.
• Cover and cook till done.
• Dry grind the whole garam masala that is the green cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. Just before removing from flame add this powder along with the nutmeg powder. Mix well and serve hot.
• It goes very well with a rumali roti or naan.
• If you are using mutton instead of chicken then add raw papaya paste to the mutton, it will help to tenderize the mutton.
• This was a simple adaptation but according to what we saw on the channel you can make it richer by adding cashew paste, saffron and mace powder.
• Garnish with chopped coriander leaves.