pakistani chicken jalfraezi

Chicken Jalfraezi

And now my favorite Chicken recipe from Sanjeev Kapoor’s Khana Khazana recipe collection.Jalfraezi means dry fry,this is a Pakistani recipe,where tender chicken breasts are dry fried and smothered in a clingy tomato flavoured sauce.It is really spicy with delicious green peppers,whole red chillies and chilly powder,and tastes different from the regular chicken recipes.

Ingredients:-

Boneless chicken – 1/2 kg
Onions sliced thin – 3 medium sized
Capsicum – 1 medium sized
Ginger – 1 inch + 1 and 1/2 inch pieces
Garlic – 10 cloves
Fresh coriander leaves chopped- a few sprigs
Vinegar – 2 tbsp
Red Chilli powder – 1 and 1/2 tsps
Cumin seeds – 1 and 1/2 tsps
Red Chillies Whole – 3
Tomato Puree – 1/2 cup
Tomato Ketchup – 2 tbsps
Salt – to taste
Oil – as needed

Method :-

Wash,pat dry chicken and cut into thin stripes.Wash,halve,deseed and cut capsicum into thin stripes.Peel and cut 1 inch piece of ginger into julienne.Grind the garlic and remaining ginger into a smooth paste.
Marinate chicken strips in 1 tbsp vinegar,half the red chilly powder,half the ginger-garlic paste and salt to taste for half an hour,preferably in a refrigerator.Heat oil in a pan and allow cumin seeds to splutter.Add whole red chillies and stir fry for few seconds.Add the sliced onions and stir fry till translucent.Add remaining ginger-garlic paste and saute for 2 to 3 mins.Now add in marinated chicken strips and stir fry for 3-4 mins.Mix in tomato puree,tomato ketchup,remaining red chilli powder and fry chicken until it is almost dry,stirring in between.Adjust the seasoning and add ginger julienne,capsicum strips,chopped coriander leaves,remaining vinegar and toss.Remove from heat and serve hot with rice/roti.

Pakistani Main Sweet Dishes

(1) Sheer Khurma:

Sheer Khurma (photo at top left) which some people wrongly pronounce as ’sheer qorma’ also, means a sweet milky and dried date dish. When I first read the following recipe’ I mistakenly read it as ’sher’ khurma, which means a Lion dish and it may still be true because if cooked properly ’sheer khurma’ is indeed a ’sher’ (lion) dish. Let us see what Begum Hafeez Inayatullah has to say:



(2) SewayiaN

No Eid is complete without a course of sweet vermacelli dish called ’sewayiaN’. Do you agree? Well, whether you agree or not, SewayiaN in all forms is so delicious that I am forced to write:

na “IF” kijiyay, na “BUT” kijiyay
jo mil jaaye bus us ko chat kijiyay

Before I go to next recipe, I remember another ’sher’ related to ’sewayiaN’ from our Bazm-e-Eid Post of last year:

ye eid ke pakwan kaa kuch aisa asar hai
mahboob ki zulfeN bhi lagti hain sewayiaN

(3) Kheer

Kheer is a sweet mixture of rice and milk. Ofcourse not as simple as mixing these two together. One has to go through the ‘arq rez’ (juice extracting) hardwork of the recipe’ written below otherwise your kheer may turn out to be a teRhi kheer (An Urdu idiom which means a hard to get fruit). I like this recipe’ because it talks about serving kheer in earthen plates (photo:right) and covered with edible ’silver’ decorations called ‘chandi ka waraq’. Serving kheer in such a way is something that has gone out of fashion decades ago. The last time I had kheer in an earthen plate was in my childhood. In traditional cooking lingo the process of putting ‘kheer’ in earthen plates is called ‘kheer lagaana’ and that reminds me of this famous sher:

ye kheer lag lag ke meri jaan kidhar jaati hai
ye meray qatal ka saamaan kidhar jaati hai

(4) Gajrela

In simplest of terms, the Gajrela recipe’ is same as the kheer recipe’ plus some carrots. Therefore Gajrela is also called gaajar kheer. But please! don’t be so naive as to simply add ‘carrots’ to the above recipe’. No. you won’t get the desired result. You must go through the pleasure of reading following recipe’ to get the desired taste. I also want to point out the unique word ‘gaajar ki guThli’ (seed of a carrot) used by Begum Sahiba below. No where else in Urdu literature can you find this word; ‘gaajar ki guThli’ :) And before I paste this unique recipe’ of gajrela below, a sher comes to mind which also sums up this whole post. ‘arz kia hai’:

sheer-khurma bhi pak raha hai, gajrela bhi pak raha hai
yehaN yooN bhi wah-wa hai, aur wooN bhi wah-wa hai