Pipul & Ghee Roasted Chicken by Tias Maity

Pepper and ghee, that is what came to mind when I first came across Amar Khamar’s Pipul or Long Pepper. The contemporary home cooking usually feature pepper more like a seasoning than a spice, but throughout history before the Portuguese got their chillies to India, pepper had acted as a spice to add heat and a punch to a cooked dish. And ghee is such an integral part of bengali life that we can finish a full plate of rice with just ghee and salt as accompaniment. This dish became a mosaic of all those thoughts and Pipul and Ghee Roasted Chicken was born. It is so deceptively simple to make with the pipul giving a complexity to the dish that it has become one of my go to chicken recipe for a quick meal.

The Mallifullo Brown Rice becomes the perfect side to this chicken recipe and makes everything taste that much decadent.

Ingredients

For Chicken

• 4-5 chicken leg pieces
• ½ cup or 100g yogurt
• 5-6 cloves of garlic
• 2 tablespoon Pipul from Amar Khamar
• 4 table spoon Kalimpong ghee from Amar Khamar
• A bunch of coriander
• 2 Black Cardamom from Amar Khamar
• 1 teaspoon Jaggery from Amar Khamar
• 5 green chillies
• 1 lemon
• Salt to Taste

For the Mallifullo Brown Rice

• 250g Mallifullo from Amar Khamar
• 1 Black Cardamom from Amar Khamar
• 1 Table spoon Kalimpong Ghee from Amar Khamar
• Water

Method

1. Dry roast the pipul till you can smell it. Then make a powder using a pestle and mortar, can be done in a food processor as well.
2. Wash the coriander and add it to a food processor. To that add ½ teaspoon roasted pipul, 2 green chillies, 3-4 garlic cloves, salt, jaggery and make a paste.
3. Make sure the cleaned chicken legs are dry before adding the yogurt and coriander paste. Add some more freshly roasted and ground pipul and a dash of lemon. Coat the chicken well and let it marinate for minimum 2h and maximum 12 hours. If you are marinating it for a long time keep it in the fridge or else it can marinate at room temperature.
4. Once the chicken is marinated, in a pan over medium high heat, add the Kalimpong ghee and let it smoke. Add lightly crushed cardamom and wait for it to become fragrant. Then take the chicken legs and brush off the marinates slightly before adding them to the pan. Let them fry for 2 to 3 minutes on each side. Add some whole cloves of garlic and whole pipul while the chicken is frying.
5. Once both sides of the chicken is fried and has a nice charred surface add the leftover marinate and reduce the heat to medium low. You can add ½ cup of water with the marinate if you like gravy or you can opt to not add water. You can also add 2-3 green chillies if you like things spicy, but that’s optional.
6. Cover the pan and let it simmer for 10 minutes or until oil is released. 
7. Serve the chicken with the rice while it is piping hot.

 For the Mallifullo Rice

1. Right before cooking the chicken the rice can be prepared to boil.
2. Rinse the Rice well under water until the water runs clear.
3. To the washed rice add water and 1 crushed black cardamom. Mallifullo is a starchy rice so it is better to add more water than necessary so that at the end of the cook the extra water can be strained and the rice remains fluffy.
4. Allow the rice to come to boil and then reduce the flame to medium low for the rice to simmer until cooked all the way through.
5. Right after the rice is cooked and the water is strained add the Kalimpong ghee over the rice and with a fork mix it in.