Fragrant Spiced Chicken with Banana Sambal
Fragrant Spiced Chicken with Banana Sambal from the BBC Good Food Eat Well 14-Day Healthy Eating Diet. This spicy Asian-inspired dish is flavoured with coriander, cumin, turmeric, almonds and cardamom. Serve with a cooling chopped salad.
Introduction
This makes six portions so freeze what you don’t eat. The sambal and rice serve two so double or triple to adjust for more servings.
Ingredients
| 2 | large onions, quartered |
| 4 | garlic cloves |
| thumb-sized piece ginger, peeled and roughly chopped | |
| 600ml | reduced-salt chicken stock |
| 1 tsp | ground coriander |
| 1 tsp | ground cumin |
| ½ tsp | ground turmeric |
| 4 | green cardamom pods |
| 1 | large red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped |
| 2 tbsp | ground almonds |
| 2 tbsp | tomato purée |
| 500g | skinless chicken breasts, cubed |
| small pack coriander, chopped | |
| For the sambal and rice (to serve 2, easily doubled): | |
|---|---|
| 1 | small red onion, finely chopped |
| ¼ | cucumber, peeled, deseeded and diced |
| 1 | small banana, diced |
| zest and juice ½ lime | |
| 250g | pack ready-cooked brown basmati rice |
Essential kit
You will need a food processor.
Method
Put the onions in a food processor with the garlic and ginger. Blitz until it is as smooth as possible, then pour in half the stock and blitz again.
Heat a large non-stick pan, sprinkle in the spices and toast for 1 min. Pour in the onion mixture, the remaining stock and all but ½ tsp of the chopped chilli. Add the almonds and tomato purée, and stir well. Simmer for 35 mins until completely soft, stirring every now and then and adding a little water if the mixture starts to catch on the bottom of the pan.
Add the chicken and half the fresh coriander. Heat very gently for 10 mins to cook the chicken through. Mix all the sambal ingredients with the remaining coriander and chilli, and heat the rice following pack instructions. Serve the chicken and sambal with the brown rice.
