Birmingham Balti

As tradition built it

Serves 2. About 20 minutes.

Ingredients

• 500 g chicken thigh, boneless, off the bone, cut into pieces
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 onion, sliced
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 tbsp grated ginger
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 0.5 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tomato, chopped
• 1 green chilli, sliced
• a small handful a small handful of fresh coriander, chopped
• to serve garlic naan, to serve

Method

1. Heat the oil hard in a thin steel balti pan until it is close to smoking.
2. Fry the onion 2 to 3 minutes, until softening but not browned.
3. Add the garlic and ginger, and fry 1 minute.
4. Add the chicken, and cook over high heat, stirring constantly, 5 to 6 minutes, until sealed and starting to colour.
5. Stir in the cumin, coriander and turmeric, and cook a further minute.
6. Add the tomato and green chilli, and cook 3 to 4 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce has reduced to coat rather than pool.
7. Scatter with coriander, and serve straight from the pan with garlic naan, scooping rather than spooning.

What a modern chef changes

The pan itself taken as seriously as the trade's own engineers took it.

Rung 3.

Method

1. Preheat the balti pan on the hottest part of a Big Green Egg's direct fire before adding any oil, so the pan itself, not just the oil, is genuinely hot enough to sear the chicken in the first thirty seconds rather than stewing it.
2. Cut the chicken slightly smaller and more evenly than a home cook's instinct suggests, since the whole method depends on a fast, even cook in a shallow pan, not a slow braise.
3. Serve it in the pan it was cooked in, with naan and no cutlery, exactly as the dish's own logic demands, since a balti moved to a clean plate stops being a balti in any meaningful sense.