This week in Stela’s Food Stories is all about celebrating spices and their striking diversity. As you already may know, I love cooking with spices and trying out new flavour combinations. As a result, I’m bringing you an exciting new main dish: ginger chicken with red lentils, served over fluffy millet. It is bursting with aromas and flavours while nutritionally balanced and incredibly simple to make. Are you ready to try it?
Which ingredients will you need for this ginger chicken with red lentils?
Onions: Onions are the base of this chicken sauce, adding zest and pleasant sweetness. The whole amount is divided into two parts, serving different purposes in this recipe. One half goes in thinly sliced and adds texture to this sauce. At the same time, the other half is the base for a ginger garlic purée, which delivers better consistency and allows a better fusion of tastes.
Garlic: Another essential element of this chicken sauce is garlic which enrichens the sauce with its pungency.
Tomato pulp: Tomatoes add a touch of acidity and freshness to this sauce, and you can add them fresh or in their processed form. I’ve decided to go with tomato pulp, a product made from finely diced tomato flesh fused with its own juices, because fresh tomatoes are not in their high season yet.
Chicken: In this recipe, I combine chicken drumsticks and thighs on the bone, resulting in perfectly tender and juicy meat. You can also use the chicken breast for a leaner option, but you may need to slightly adjust the cooking time.
Red lentils: A tiny, orangish variety of lentils with a sweeter taste than green or brown lentils, which pair perfectly with this combination of spices.
They can be purchased whole or split. The most significant difference is that the split ones cook much faster and result in a mushy texture, while the whole ones keep their shape better when cooked. I prefer split red lentils when making soups or purées, but in this case, whole red lentils give this sauce a much better texture.
If you don’t have red lentils, you can switch them for green or brown lentils, but in that case, add them to the recipe when adding water since they need a longer time to cook.
Cauliflower: Cauliflower is an amazing, versatile vegetable from the Brassica family, as well as broccoli, cabbage and kale. When cooked with these aromatic spices, it has an incredible taste and adds an enjoyable crunch to the dish.
Millet: I’m using pearl millet in this recipe, the most common available millet variety on the European market. You will easily find it in the grain isles of supermarkets as well as smaller, well-equipped stores.
If this is your first encounter with millet, in a few moments, you will find out what it is and what is the best way to cook it, so stay tuned.
Spices
Ginger: Ginger is a flowering plant from the Zingiberaceae family, and its root is used as a spice. You can buy it fresh, dried or powdered, but I find it most powerful and flavourful in its fresh form. It has a spicy, fiery taste, primarily thanks to a compound called gingerol, that gives a welcoming kick to this chicken sauce.
Turmeric: Turmeric is closely related to ginger and looks strikingly similar, but its recognisable deep yellow-orange colour sets them apart. It can be used in the same ways as ginger, but it is most often added to recipes in its powdered form, as in this one. If you want to substitute it for fresh turmeric, use a ratio of raw to powdered turmeric of 3:1.
Apart from its vibrant colour, it adds a peppery, earthy taste that balances nicely with the sweeter spices in this sauce.
Cinnamon: Even though it is most often linked to sweet recipes, cinnamon works perfectly well in savoury dishes, especially when paired with chicken. It adds a sweet, slightly nutty taste and helps build layers of flavour in this sauce.
Even though you can also use it ground, I recommend you add it in a stick as it allows the aromas to blend more subtly into the sauce.
Cloves: Cloves are an aromatic, warm spice that usually accompanies cinnamon in various recipes, from desserts and drinks to savoury dishes. They are actually dried flowers of the clove tree (Syzygium aromaticum) native to the Maluku Islands in Indonesia and can be found as whole or ground.
In this recipe, you’ll need whole flower buds, which add a pleasant warmth and punch to this ginger chicken with red lentils.
Bay leaf: Bay leaves are aromatic leaves coming from the bay laurel plant that can be used fresh or dried in their whole or ground form. Dried bay leaves have a more concentrated flavour, which is why they are often the preferred option in soups, stews, braising liquids, etc.
In this recipe, the bay leaf is added whole. As it cooks inside the braising liquid, it releases a herbal, floral fragrance that adds to the complexity of this dish.
Kashmiri chilli: These vibrant red chilli peppers got their name after an Indian region they are grown in, called Kashmir. They are very mild in spice but add a lively red colour to various Indian dishes, for example, the Tandoori Chicken.
The chilli peppers are dried and sold whole or in their powdered form. You will likely find them ground, but you can blend them into a powder if you get them as whole dried peppers. Since they are not widely available, you can substitute them with sweet paprika and a pinch of cayenne pepper.
What is millet?
Millet is one of the ancient grains that has been cultivated for thousands of years. It is actually a name for a group of cereal grains belonging to the grass family, which all have similar nutritional composition but differ in size and colour.
The variety most commonly used in our diet is pearl millet. It can be found pearled (unhulled) or hulled. Still, the hard covering must be removed before we consume it because it is indigestible.
The hulled millet looks much like small yellow beads with tiny black dots where they are separated from the stem.
Millet holds an essential place in the cuisines of African and Asian countries, but over the ages, it was also a staple in Eastern Europe. Today, it is gaining popularity in the rest of the world because of its excellent nutritional composition and short cooking time. It can be used as a breakfast cereal, ground into flour or served as a side dish, as we’ll use it in this ginger chicken recipe.
When cooked, millet has a slightly nutty flavour and a fluffy texture, which is uncommon for other whole grains.
How to cook millet?
I’ve tried cooking millet in a few different ways, following various recipes, but I mostly got a very mushy, overcooked version of millet. It may not bother you if you want to eat it like porridge. Still, the mushiness is not a particularly welcoming attribute if you want to enjoy it as a side dish. When millet is served as a side dish, you want it fluffy and airy. By following the next few steps, I assure you perfectly cooked millet every time!
To cook millet, use a ratio of water to millet of 2:1. Place them together in a pot with a pinch of salt and bring them to a boil. Once it has come to a boil, lower the heat and cover it with a lid. Cook millet for 12-15 minutes until all the water has been soaked. Once all the water is gone, take it off the heat and fluff it up using a fork. Then, leave it covered for another 10 minutes to finish cooking.
How to make this ginger chicken with red lentils?
I love making this recipe. Preparing it is so easy yet so much fun. Even for beginners and less experienced cooks, it will be a pleasure to make it. Even though I’m most often using French cooking techniques, this recipe incorporates a few little tricks very much present in Indian cooking. They will help bring the best out of the spices used and make the sauce much more complex in taste.
While preparing all the ingredients, take the chicken out of your fridge to come to room temperature.
Start by putting together all the spices needed for this recipe. Since some of them you’ll use in their whole and some in their powdered form, divide them into two. The ground spices will be added later to the sauce than the whole ones.
The next step is preparing the ginger garlic purée, a blend of vegetables which will make the sauce much more flavoursome.
Cut the top of the onions, slice them in half and peel. Use only half the amount of the onion for the purée. Cut the bottom of each garlic clove, crush it with the flat part of your knife and peel. Finally, peel the fresh ginger by using a pairing knife. Add the prepared ingredients for the ginger garlic purée together with tomato pulp inside a blender cup and blend it on high speed until almost smooth and even. The smoother it is, the better the result will be.
Once the ginger garlic purée is ready, thinly slice the other half of the onion and leave it on the side.
As for the rest of the ingredients, you will have enough time to prepare them while the chicken cooks.
Heat a pan and add olive oil. I’m using a sauté pan, but if you are making a smaller quantity, you can also opt for the wok pan.
First, add the whole spices and herbs: the cinnamon stick, cloves and bay leaf, and toast them for a minute or two. This step releases the aromas into the oil, giving it an even more enhanced flavour.
Next, lower the heat and add the sliced onion. Sauté on low heat for 2-3 minutes until the onion becomes translucent. Lightly salt it to speed up the release of water.
Add the rest of the spices, ground turmeric and Kashmiri chilli. Cook on low heat for another 2-3 minutes, stirring frequently. You want the spices to incorporate evenly and lightly toast but not burn.
Now is the time to add the ginger garlic purée. Increase the temperature and pour in the purée. Cook it for another minute or two until you get an evenly-looking sauce. Once the sauce has come to a simmer, add in the chicken. Make sure the chicken pieces are coated with the sauce on all sides. This step will allow the chicken meat to infuse some of the aromas of the sauce. Cook everything while constantly stirring until all the liquid has evaporated.
Probably you’ve noticed that I haven’t salted the chicken before. The salt is added after the sauce has thickened and the chicken has absorbed some of those beautiful flavours.
The only thing that is missing at this point is water, so add it, and once the sauce comes to a boil, cover the pan and cook everything on low heat for 10 minutes.
While the chicken is cooking, prepare the remaining ingredients. Weigh out red lentils and rinse them under water to remove any dirt. Rinse the cauliflower and slice it into quarters. Lay each quarter on the board, and with only one cut, remove the stem. Separate the florets and make sure they are of an even size so that they cook even. You can also use the stems but first cut them into even dice.
Once the 10 minutes have passed, add in the red lentils and cauliflower. Cover it again and cook on a low simmer for 15 minutes until the lentils are cooked, and the cauliflower is tender but has a pleasant bite. You want the sauce to simmer and not vigorously boil. Once all the elements are cooked, leave the pan covered, off heat, for another 5 minutes to cool down slightly. Finally, discard the bay leaf, cinnamon stick and cloves, as they are not meant to be eaten.
Serve the garlic chicken with red lentils over cooked millet and enjoy.
