Sweet Onion and Chicken Curry

An almost dry dish with very little sauce. This is beautifully balanced; the heat from the chillis is offset nicely by the sweetness of the onions and coriander, making for a really interesting and quite subtle set of flavours. It's really easy to make too, with only a little prep and a short cooking time.

This is my take on the Coorg style chicken with tomatoes found at Aayi's Recipes. It goes beautifully with both the Brinjal (Aubergine) Bhaji and Cauliflower Bhaji.

• 2 skinless chicken breasts
• 1 medium onion
• 1 tomato
• 3 birds eye chillis
• 1" thumb of ginger
• 3 cloves garlic
• ¾ tsp salt
• ½ tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp coarse ground black pepper
• 150ml water
• 1 tbsp groundnut oil
• 15g fresh coriander (small sprig)

Finely chop the onion and the chillis and peel and grate the garlic and the ginger.

Get the oil good and hot in a wide, lidded pan and when hot put in the onion, chillis, garlic, ginger and salt. Stir fry for a few minutes before turning the heat down and leaving to soften.

While you're waiting finely chop the tomato and dice the chicken breasts into 1" to 2" cubes. When the onions have softened (maybe 5 minutes) turn the heat back up to medium and put the tomato in the pan, stirring for another minute or two.

Next, put in the cubed chicken, the ground cumin and the pepper and stir fry the lot for approximately 5 minutes.

Put in the water and turn the heat right down again for another 5 minutes, before turning it up high for the last minute of two to boil off the remainder of the liquid.

Finally, roughly chop the fresh coriander before taking the pan off the heat and stirring in the coriander at the last minute before serving.