Chicken Paprika – The dos and don’ts will bring a tear to your eye.

I have seen lots of recipes for Chicken Paprika. Mine is unique (as you might expect). It’s uniqueness doesn’t come from any particular skill I have in the kitchen. It comes from having thoughtful friends and family. Thoughtful friend, Richard McGary sent us a box of chilis earlier in the year. While Richard was cogitating his selection, eldest daughter was busy in Budapest drinking low-priced beer and negotiating strings of paprika chilis for my delight. So in honour of both Richard and eldest daughter, I give you my take on Chicken Paprika.

The mix of Texas Hatch Chilis and Hungarian Paprika Chilis makes for a pretty fiery concoction. However, it is soothed by a combination of turnips and the accompanying mashed potatoes. Don’t be afraid of giving this a go. My darling mother, who might not mind me saying is in her 80s, enjoyed it and described it as a “real winter warmer”. Highest praise indeed.

A nice moody ingredients shot spoiled by the zany flour jar.

Ingredients:

• A good-sized chicken
• 500 ml of good chicken stock
• 2 big onions
• 1 turnip
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 10 paprika chilis
• 1 hatch chili
• 1 heaped teaspoon of cumin seeds
• Flour for dusting
• A bunch of coriander
• 1 small tin of tomato purée
• Salt and pepper

First, some dos and don’ts

Do put the chilis on a baking tray and pop them in a 170º oven for 4 minutes. This dries them out enough to make them easy to pound to powder later on.

Pop ’em on the tray and pop ’em in the oven.

Don’t forget to set the timer. Don’t go out into the garden and start pulling weeds on the patio.

You could take it as revenge. Me burning the chilis not the reverse.

It’s a good thing Richard and eldest daughter got me plenty. I set the timer second time around. My second attempts were crisped without being ‘burned to a crisp’ as the old saying goes. When they had cooled, I put them into the mortar and crushed them into a nice coarse powder.

Dried chilis ready for the bashing. Note the presence of colour.

The colour released by the chili bashing is amazing.

Fantastic colour from the mix of chilis. Unfortunately, the dust gets in the air too.

A second set of dos and don’ts is called for now.

Do grind the peppers into a powder.

Don’t pummel and bash the chilis and get chili dust into the air. When that happens, it gets up your nose and you start to sneeze and it gets into your eyes. Then you rub your eyes….

Back to the recipe. Chop the onions roughly and sweat them off in a casserole dish. Remove them and set them aside. Take the whole chicken…

The whole chicken.

Take out your anger and frustration by chopping the chicken into nice bite-sized pieces. That is, if you can see through the paprika induced tears and pain.

The chicken, chopped.

Cover the chicken in dusted flour and fry it in a little olive oil.

This made me feel like I was in a KFC advertisement. Difference is I was using chicken.

The chicken needs to be fried until it is a nice golden brown on all sides.

A gratuitous chicken frying shot.

One of these days, I must do a fried chicken dish. At this stage, it was pretty tempting.

And a gratuitous fried chicken shot. Just before I add it back to the pot.

Next I returned the onions and the chicken to the casserole dish and added the stock. Cue a pouring shot.

The stock helps add more depth of chicken flavour to the dish.

Next I dry fried the cumin seeds and gave them the pestle and mortar treatment then I added it and the paprika, being careful to avoid getting it in my eyes again.

The paprika and cumin add a delicious colour to the chicken. Note the different colours in the powder.

Next to go in was the tomato purée and put the casserole in the oven for half an hour at 200ºC. During the half an hour, I took the turnip…

The gratuitous turnip shot. I’ll bet you didn’t see that coming.

…chopped it and added it to the dish. Then put it back in the oven for another half hour.

I think we will agree it looks pretty appetising at this stage.

All that is left to do now is to give you the final dos and don’ts.

Do prepare this delicious dish and serve it to family and friends.

Don’t procrastinate about it. It is really worthwhile, even if you nearly blind yourself with paprika while sneezing your head off. Just be careful…

Despite the heat, it went well with this organic wine from the south of France.

You can’t see the label of the wine because of the paprika in your eyes. Sorry about that.