VIETNAMESE FAVORITE CURRY CHICKEN
(Suitable to be served in cool seasons)
By: Michael Tran
Ingredients for 6 to 8 person serving:
1 (4 lb) fryer chicken 8 full soup spoons of liquid
3 lb sweet potatoes lard (or 6 spoons in condensed
1 lb carrots form)
2 medium-sized bulbs of yellow onion 4 qt water
5 soup spoons condensed milk 3 coffee spoons of salt
2-3 oz of curry powder (can be obtained 3 soup spoons of self-rising flour
in packs of 1.8 oz at Oriental Market) or
any type of curry fragrance)
How to cook: Clean the fryer in water and cut it as it is – without removing the bone, nor skin – into cubic inch sized pieces (livers, gizzards are removed from chicken, but not necessarily cut; only the chicken’s neck can be cut into 4 pieces). Use a big bowl or a plastic pie-saver to keep the cut pieces – only livers are kept separately. Spray the 3 ounces of curry powder on the cut chicken pieces, and mix them all over, using the hand or a stick for chicken meat to absorb curry. Also spray curry on the chicken livers and put the curry-absorbed livers together with meat in the bowl. Skin sweet potatoes, carrots and onion bulbs; then cut them into 1 ½ inch sized pieces. Pour 4 spoons of lard liquid (2 spoons of condensed lard) into the saucepan over medium flame, allowing the lard to heat up and melt before putting sweet potatoes, carrots and onion readily cut as mentioned above into the pan. Use a large spoon to stir up potatoes and carrots for them to absorb heat and lard evenly on the pan, until they get half-fried (do not fry them too much because the pieces of potatoes will break easily!) Put off the flames Use another big sauce pan over fairly high flames. Pour the remaining spoons of lard into the pan, allowing the lard to heat up and melt. Empty the bowl of chicken pieces into the hot saucepan, and stir up chicken for all pieces to fry evenly. When all pieces of chicken appear to be roughly fried, pour 5 full soup spoons of salt into the mixture; stirring it up again; then put off the flames. Mix 3 soup spoons of self-rising flour into 4 quarts of water. Be sure the flour is mixed completely. Pour 4 quarts of water mixed above into the mixture of half-fried chicken and potatoes, carrots, and onion. Using the big spoon to stir up the whole content a couple of times. Allow the curry chicken to be cooked for 20 minutes over high flames; then turn the flames to medium-low for ten more minutes before they are ready for serving.
NOTE: Curry chicken cooked this way is to be served in a dish. Each chicken cube is to be soaked lightly in a sauce separately prepared, which consists of salt mixed with ground black pepper and real lime juice (vinegar can be used instead, but making the sauce less tasty) just enough juice squeezed over to wet the salt before eating. Serve curry chicken along with hot French bread or hot steamed rice. Drinks that go along are beer, scotch or whiskey.
