Ramadan 2018- Chicken Mandi

Chicken Mandi is a popular fragrant rice recipe in middle east. The Mandi can be made with either chicken or mutton or camel meat. The dish I heard, is a traditional recipe from Yemen.

Ingredients

Chicken - 1 Kg Cut in to half
Basmati rice - 2 cups
Onion sliced - 1 large
Garlic and ginger paste – 1 tsp
Mandi spices – 1 ½ tbsp. (The ingredients are given below. In middle east you can buy "Baharat" - Arabic spice blend from grocery shops)
Butter – 1 tbsp
Salt to taste
4 cups water
Tomato puree - 1 large
Olive oil
Green Chillies – 5 nos
Cloves – 5-6 nos
Black pepper pods – 10 nos
Cardamom – 5-6 nos
Bay leaves – 2-3 nos
Cinnamon sticks – 3 nos

Mandi spice mixture

Green Cardamom – 1 Tbspn
Whole cloves – 1 Tbspn
Black Pepper corn – 1 Tbspn
Nutmeg – ½ Tbspn
Mace – 1/2 Tbspn
Dry Ginger – 1 Tbspn
Bay leaves – 2 nos
Grind the above spices to a smooth powder in a grinder

Method

* In the thermal cooker add olive oil and shallow fry the onion.

* Then add ginger-garlic paste, green chillies, whole spices and tomato puree. Saute for 1 minute.

* Place the chicken mix well. With skin-side down fry for few minutes.

* Add 4 cups of water, 1 tbsp of mandi spice powder and salt to taste.

* Allow the chicken to cook for 20 minutes. Remove the chicken from stock. Drain well and keep aside.

* Mix together with ghee/ butter, mandi spice powder and some salt. Pour this mixture over drained chicken pieces.

* Microwave for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

* Heat olive oil in a pan and fry basmathi rice.

* Add the rice to the chicken stock made by boiling the chicken. If water is less add more water so that the rice cooks well.

* Once the rice is cooked well the last step to be done is the method of smoking the dish with charcoal. This is the speciality of Mandi.

* Burn the coal to red hot on your stove top. Place a small bowl over the cooked rice with 1 tbsp of olive oil. Place the red hot coal in the bowl with olive oil. cover the lid immediately. Note that the lid should be air tight so that no smoke goes out of the rice pot. Let it smoke for 2 minutes inside the pot.

* Now our delicious arabic special Chicken Mandi rice is ready to serve.

* While Serving, place the grilled chicken pieces on top of the smoked Mandi rice in a large dish along with tomato chutney (Grind tomato, green chilli, lemon juice and salt to taste).