Our recipe of the month is for Andhra Green Chili Chicken, a fiery dish from Southeastern India. Full of flavor and spicy hot, this dish will awaken all your senses. You can create a remarkably complex and satisfying meal with only a few ingredients.

We encountered this dish in 2012 while eating at the Nandhini Restaurant in Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), India. It was love at first bite! "Andhra style" cooking is derived from the cuisine of Andhra Pradesh in southeastern India. While predominantly Hindu now, Andhra Pradesh used to be a very important site for Buddhism, and there are many Buddhist relics, stupas, and monuments to be found there. Andhra Pradesh is referred to as India's "rice bowl" due to the prevalence of rice agriculture in the Krishna-Godavari Delta region. Not surprisingly, the region is known for rice dishes. Hyderabad Biriyani and Kodi Pulao (similar to "pilaf") are two notable examples. . Various meat, fish, and vegetarian curries abound. 

The problem for American cooks in cooking South and Southeast Asian chicken dishes is that chickens you buy in the grocery store here are often gigantic compared to chickens found elsewhere in the world. I believe this affects both the taste and texture of chicken dishes that are curried or cooked in a sauce. We discovered a reasonable alternative. Cornish game hens are actually a breed of (normally) smaller chicken. They tend to be more tender and, at least to me, taste better. You can buy Cornish game hens in most supermarkets (usually frozen). The Cornish game hens Costco sells are nearly the size of a regular chicken. The difference between using chicken and Cornish game hen for a curry is more apparent with white meat than with dark.

Like most bone-in Indian chicken recipes, the chicken should be cut "curry style" meaning the drumsticks and thighs are cut in two with a cleaver. The problem with doing this (which we suffer through) is that cutting a chicken leg bone in half can create bone shards, so be careful. The breast meat is cut into bite-sized boneless pieces. Another advantage of using a smaller Cornish game hen is it allows you to forgo cutting the leg pieces in half. It is best if the chicken pieces are skinned before cooking.

Most people in India use pressure cookers. Nowadays the most common form of pressure cooker in America is an instant pot, which works just fine for this dish. You can also use a slow cooker or even a pot on the stove, but a pressure cooker or instant pot is much faster and also allows the spices to penetrate more deeply into the chicken pieces. It is even more important that you use as pressure cooker/instant pot if you use a regular grocery store chicken.

Over the years since 2012, I have tried making this dish many times, but until recently one aspect always fell short. Most online Andhra Green Chili Chicken recipes use hot green chilies that are sliced into 1/2 inch pieces or so. The exact type of chili is almost never mentioned (most appear similar to slightly longer Thai chilies). In the past, I was always disappointed in two ways going this route. First, no matter how you cook them, the skins of the chilies are too tough. On top of this, the Nandhini recipe I recalled eating had longer strips of chilies which had a good mouthfeel when eaten. I finally arrived at a solution that works great. The chilies I like best for this dish are Serrano chilies that have been pre-roasted and then their skins removed. The traditional way of roasting a chili is to pop it on an open flame or grill, but broiling them in an oven or using an air-fryer (my most recent preference) works just great. Other options are cutting the peppers in half, placing them on a baking sheet cut side down, and broiling them. Deep fat frying (for less than a minute) is also an option. After the skins begin to blacken (regardless of the method you use to do this), place the still-hot peppers in a small sealed container or zip-lock bag, and let them cool for 5 to 10 minutes. This step allows the peppers to peel more easily. Then cut off the stem ends and slice the peppers longitudinally. Now you will have a decision, on how many seeds to include in the pot. The more seeds, the hotter the dish. If you don't use any seeds, the dish will be medium hot. I tolerate spicy food well, but using all the seeds was too hot for me. Now I use half. However, it's always a surprise because the hotness of any particular chili of the same variety tends to vary. As always, experiment. For those who can't tolerate hot chilies, please note that nearly everyone starts out this way. You have to build up tolerance, and tolerance is not permanent—if you don't eat spicy food for a while, your ability to tolerate capsicum will diminish over time. If your tolerance is particularly low, substitute Jalapeño peppers which are anywhere between 2 and 10 times less hot than Serranos. Again, the best way to prevent the dish from being too spicy hot is to control the number of chili seeds that go into the pot. And if the resulting curry ends up being too hot for your mouth to handle, eat it with a side of full-fat yogurt or full-fat raita. The oil in the yogurt will tone down the pain on your tongue and perhaps mitigate—at least a little—digestive difficulties. 

This recipe uses ghee as a medium to fry the spices and onion, but the ghee also adds a good deal of flavor to the dish. Ghee is butter that has simmered until the milk solids just begin to brown and then strained (to remove the milk solids). The slight browning is what differentiates it from clarified butter which is clearer and less flavorful. For this dish it might be fine to use plain butter to fry the spices and onion— just make sure you don't burn the butter.

Ingredients:

• 1 large or 2 small Cornish game hens cut into large bite-sized pieces (see above)
• 2 tablespoons ghee or butter
• 10 - 20 Serrano chilies prepared as explained above
• 14 ounces (1 can) of chicken broth or stock
• 2 teaspoons powdered turmeric
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1 teaspoon ground pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 3 crushed garlic cloves
• 1/2 onion finely diced
• Juice from 1/2 a lime
• Salt to taste

*note: Except for the turmeric, all the spices are the ingredients for garam masala, and therefore, you can use store-bought garam masala instead of the individual spices listed.

Preparation:

1. Cut and prepare the Cornish game hen(s) according to the description above.
2. Roast, set aside in a tightly closed container for 10 minutes, and then peel the Serrano peppers.
3. Slice the peppers longitudinally and scrape off some or all of the seeds (depending on your tolerance for Chili heat).
4. Lightly sauté the spices, onion, and garlic in ghee (or butter) in your instant pot, pressure cooker, whatever pot you end up using.
5. Add the sliced Serrano peppers, Cornish game hen pieces, and the chicken stock into the instant pot.
6. Seal the instant pot at set it on high pressure with a cooking time of 12 minutes. If using a different method of cooking (such as a pot), simmer covered for 45 minutes.
7. When you are able to open the lid, stir in the lime juice.
8. Serve the chili chicken with rice (Basmati is standard), sides of Channa Masala, Raita (or yogurt), a vegetable, and a flatbread like naan or paratha (our favorite!).

Nī bhōjanānni āsvādin̄cu! (Bon Appétit in Telugu)

Recipe by T. Johnston-O'Neill
Photos by Shari K. Johnston-O'Neill