Recipe : Chicken Cafreal - Goan Dish

I've tried a lot of Chicken Cafreal recipes from different cookbooks and websites, but none of them has come close to matching the awesome preparation at Florentines in Goa.

I recently discovered this website for Goan cooking and its quickly becoming my first option for Goan recipes surpassing my Maria Teresa Menezes and Usgaokar + Sardesai - Traditional Taste of Goa. It just doesn't have as many recipes - quantity (yet), but the quality is finger licking good. The recipe for Chicken Cafreal on Goan Food Recipes came the closest to what I was hoping for.

I cooked half a kilo chicken with very minor alterations. If you want to cook a kilo, then check the quantities out from the original location

Ingredients:

1/2 kilo chicken
4 - 5 green chillies
8 -12 stalks of coriander leaves.
1 inch piece of ginger
8-9 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp khuskhus (poppy seeds)
5 peppercorns (kali mirch)
1" cinnamon (dalchini)
1 tsp cumin seeds (jeera)
1/2 tsp turmeric powder (haldi)
2 tsps tamarind paste
4 - 6 cloves (laung)
1 tsp ginger garlic paste

1 tsp oil
1 tsp butter

Method:
Clean chicken, pat dry and apply ginger garlic paste and keep for awhile, when you are prepapring the rest of the ingredients.

Tip:
Poppy seeds don't grind very well in modern mixis, they need the heavy grinding stones. So before putting them into the mixi, I like to soak the poppy seeds in a tsp or 2 of hot water and then pound it in my mortar/pestle.

Grind all the ingredients except the chicken, oil and butter to a fine paste. Marinate the chicken in this mixture for at least 4 hours. I prefer 24 hours (marinate one night, cook the next)

Heat the oil and add the marinated chicken to the pan.
As the chicken begins to cook, add the butter (you can skip this, but it is what gives the dish its flavour)

Cook till done.
Serve with salad and pau bread (I used multigrain bread in the picture below)