Chicken curry

I was looking through my Indian cookery books  for a new recipe to try out for a cosy boxing day meal, however I didn't find one that was speaking to me. I knew what I wanted, which was something with almonds, but also spicy, with plenty of sauce for my rice, and nothing I was reading was giving me this. So henceforth comes a curry I decided to invent with all these factors. Even though it was my first time creating a curry without a recipe, I think it was a success!



Ingredients
For the chicken marinade:
1/2tsp turmeric 
1/2 tsp cayenne 
1 1/4 tsp ground cumin 
1 1/2 tsp ground coriander 
1/4 tsp salt 

Depending on how many people your'e cooking for just use that many chicken breasts (if they're small, add one for the pan too) Give them a rinse under water just for good measure, then cut them into pieces you'd like to have in a curry. Put all those spices on the chicken, stir it until all the chicken has a good covering then cover with cling film and leave to marinate for at least an hour. 

Other ingredients! 
1 onion peeled and finely sliced
1/2 tsp cayenne 
1 tsp ground cumin 
1 tsp ground coriander 
1 kaffir lime leaf
30g ground almonds 
2 red chillies 
1 inch piece of fresh ginger
4 cloves of garlic 
75ml water 
1 tbsp tomato puree diluted with 120ml hot water 
400g tinned/chopped tomatoes 
6 tbsp natural yogurt (approx)
4 tbsp double cream (approx)
Basmati rice to serve 

Method

Use a casserole dish with a thick base for this as it will need to simmer in the oven for sometime to intensify the flavour and ensure the chicken is fully cooked. Chop the chillies roughly, and peels the garlic and ginger, place in a small blender with the 75ml of water and blend to make a paste. Depending on how spicy you want your curry you can either leave in the seeds of the chilli or leave them in. I personally left them in. Then sear the chicken in a single layer on the pan and then place on a plate with a slotted spoon. The chicken won't even be nearly cooked, this just traps there marinade on and gives them a good colour.

Once you have browned all the chicken pieces in this way fry the onion until soft and then turn down the heat and add your chilli-garlic-ginger paste. The water will very quickly boil away. The onions may still look liquidy but thats fine, now add the remaining spices and the ground almonds. Stir this around for at least 1 minute, then add your chopped tomato and tomato puree. Turn the heat back up and boil this. now add the natural yogurt. Now I like a saucy curry, and I like it to be smooth, so at this stage I get my hand held blender out and give it a good whiz to make it really smooth and velvety. This is matter of opinion however, so the blending isn't entirely necessary. Have a little taste, it will be spicy, but the cream added at the end will help this. If you don't like it this spicy then add a little more yogurt and taste again, don't mask all the spice though! Now add the chicken pieces back in with any accumulated juices, bring back to the boil then simmer for up to an hour. To check all the chicken is cooked take out a big piece and just cut into to check. (Or if you have a food probe give a piece of chicken a poke and the temperature in the middle should be 80-90 .C) 
As this curry is quite spicy I like to make the rice with a splash of double cream, it just makes it all a bit more mild! I also add 1/2tsp turmeric to make the rice yellow to give the dish some authenticity. A great trick with rice is double the water compared to rice, e.g 1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water, perfect rice every time!! Then to finish it all off some spiced yogurt, which I make to go with all indian things, its a 2;1 ratio of natural yogurt to creme fraiche with 1/4tsp or ground cumin and 1/8tsp cayenne.