For this recipe, we take a short detour over to Vietnam. I was looking to write up a recipe on how my mom makes curry, but honestly this is just way better...
Ingredients
1 tbsp Annatto seed
1 tbsp Paprika
1/2 tbsp Tumeric
3 tbsp Madras curry powder
2 tbsp Chicken bouillon powder
1-2 whole red chili peppers
Lemongrass
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
Cooking oil
Garlic
Ginger
1 red onion
1 white onion
Chicken drumsticks
Japanese sweet potatoes
Steps
First, put 1 tbsp of Annatto seed in cooking oil
Heat the seeds over low heat until the color permeates throughout the oil. This will be used as a condiment on top of the curry later. For now, just set it aside.
Next, dice some red onion, ginger and garlic. There's no science to exactly how much of each, but feel free to do it to taste or based on the picture below.
Cut your chicken drumsticks into evenly-sized chunks. Put it in a mixing bowl along with your diced red onions, diced ginger, diced garlic, diced chili peppers, 1 tsp salt, and 2 tbsp sugar. Mix thoroughly and set aside.
Wash, peel, and cut your Japanese sweet potatoes into chunks.
Fry them over low to medium heat in some oil on a frying pan.
Cook the potatoes all the way through without burning them. You want them to be browned like this:
Set the potatoes aside. Now for the final ensemble!
Heat up some cooking oil in a big frying/sauce pan. I prefer to use a wok for everything.
Add a generous amount of diced red onion.
Then add diced ginger and garlic
Lastly, add several stalks of lemongrass and fry evenly.
Add 3 tbsp Madras curry powder and mix.
Now add the chicken mixture from before and start mixing frequently to evenly cook the chicken
Fry fry fry
Now add some water. Not a lot of water, we need to save space for the coconut cream. In other words, don't cover the chicken with water.
Cover the pan/wok with a lid and bring the water to a boil, cooking the chicken all the way through.
You can cut open a piece of chicken to verify if it's been cooked through.
Now add some whole milk, 1 can of coconut cream, and 1 tsp sugar.
Mix it all together
Cut some white onion slices and add to the mixture
Finally, add 5 tbsp of the annatto oil that we made earlier. Be careful not to include the actual seeds.
That's it! Traditionally, the curry is eaten with a French baguette, as opposed to rice or noodles. It is also common to mix salt and pepper in a separate dish for dipping the curry chicken into.
