“Posto-Chicken” – Chicken cooked with poppy seeds

We have talked about oil-free cooking or cooking in less oil before on this blog. It’s generally seen that we rarely observe this religiously in our daily lives. Choice and consumption of oily food deteriorates our health very much, during our busy schedules. With the ever-growing number of diseases it is a sacrilegious to even think of our daily staple made of fried / oily stuff. As a result, we need to consciously avoid the oil-rich junk-food, to cut calories and keep cholesterol under check.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve to eat only boiled-food and can’t munch on our favorite chicken and mutton recipes. With careful choice and innovations, we can still enjoy our chicken or mutton with very little oil! This single-most factor inspired me to take an initiative to cook my first-ever home-made chicken dish – with just 2 tea-spoons of oil!

I wanted to give the dish an all-new innovative taste, by adding poppy-seeds – popularly known as “Posto” in Bengal – while making sure that the measure of oil is almost ‘nil’. This recipe is my ingenious version of “Posto-Chicken”, especially since I did not use ginger; but trust me it doesn’t compromise on the taste of this preparation.

Posto Chicken (c)saastastebuds

Ingredients for preparing “Posto-Chicken” or Chicken with Poppy seeds”

1. 2 TBLSP mustard oil
2. 2 large onions, finely chopped
3. 1 piece capsicum – finely chopped
4. 1 clove garlic
5. 25 gms Posto (poppy seeds)
6. 1/4 cup water
7. 800gms chicken (+/- 200gms if required)
8. 2 pc cardamom, cloves and 1 small piece cinnamon
9. 1/4 tsp turmeric powder
10. 4 medium pieces green chillies
11. 1 TSP chilli powder
12. Salt as per taste
13. 25gms butter
14. 100gms curd (non-sweetened – preferably fat-free)

Preparation:

• Marinate chicken with turmeric, chilli powder and a little salt and keep aside in a cool place.
• Grind the poppy seeds and garlic together in a grinder and keep aside.
• Now heat 1 TSP oil in a ‘kadai’/ wok in low-flame for 2 minutes.
• Add the cardamom, cloves & the single piece of cinnamon to the oil and sauté for 3 minutes till you get the beautiful appetizing aroma from it.
• Fry onions & chopped capsicum until golden brown.
• Now add the marinated chicken, 1TSP oil, the garlic and poppy-seeds paste and sauté for 2 minutes.
• Add the curd to it and stir well till it forms nice thick gravy.
• Add a little water and keep the kadai / wok covered for some time, to get the taste and aroma of slow, covered cooking. It will keep the juice of the chicken and boil it properly too.
• Add the butter when the curry is dry to develop the rich aroma of butter, and stir very lightly, to evenly mix, while not breaking the chicken pieces
• Once you get the rich essence of the “posto” and the butter, empty the wok carefully into a large bowl, making sure none of the chicken pieces are broken / mutilated
• Garnish with the green chillies and bit of curd.

Your “posto chicken” is now ready to serve. It’s best enjoyed with “Tandoori-Roti” – i.e. oven fresh hand-made flat-bread.

“Posto” or poppy seeds are mainly used for vegetarian preparations – hence my preparation experience was quite different. This favored Bengali ingredient not only adds a unique flavor to your chicken, but the aromatic taste of capsicum and green chillies, makes the chicken taste quite different from your everyday chicken dishes.

Once this recipe was given its test run at my home the “posto-chicken” has become the most important Indian recipe across all my extended family members. This beautiful recipe with a touch of Bengal was next shared with a few of my friends too, and gave the same “different” and “unique” kind of responses from them.

So try this out and leave your experiences in the comments section below. If you keep on experimenting like me, you’d be able to come up with more different recipes in due course of time.

Stay tuned to this page for more recipes from my hobby kitchen!

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Ingredients of Indian Cooking #2 – Poppy-seeds

Poppy pod holding the seeds (source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fireflies604)

Ever figured out how you could craft your own native Indian delicacies, which are identical (or better) in taste to the ones you enjoyed in the restaurants? To be able to do that, you must first learn the fundamentals of preparing Indian food and be able to nurture the unique traditional ingredients. Indian delicacies are loved by many gourmets across the world, especially because apart from it being delightful, full of taste and being easy to prepare, it is also comparatively healthier than other cuisines of the world

One of the common ingredients of Indian cooking – which is especially popular among the Bengalis is “Posto” or the White Poppy seeds. Known as “Khas-Khas” in Hindi language, many types of dishes are cooked with the poppy seeds in Andhra cuisine, Oriya cuisine, and Malabar cuisine (Northern Kerala). The Bengalis have given this ingredient a diverse dimension within their kitchens and among Indian cuisine in general.

Poppy seeds are produced from opium poppy and harvested as an oilseed in India. The oil contains mostly linoleic and oleic fat. It is carrier oil because it’s clear, has a very little odor and has a satisfying flavor. There are 2 types of poppy seeds – black and white.

Origin and Distribution

Poppy originated from the Western Mediterranean region of Europe and is cultivated in Asian countries like India, China, Japan and European countries like Russia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Deutschland, Holland and Portugal for its legal and pharmaceutical uses. The opium poppy is also illegally used and cultivated as a drug in many countries. However in India it is a licensed crop as the mature fruit is collected for the production of opium.

Usage of poppy seeds

Poppy seed (Khas-Khas) is used as food and as a source of fatty oil. Because of its highly wholesome nature, the white as well as black poppy seeds are also used in many baked goods (muffins, biscuits, etc.) main course dishes and desserts (ice-creams). Their rich oil content (up to 50%), makes it possible to have added oils in the food items, while also giving a crunchy texture to the food.

Poppy seeds are highly nutritious and less-allergenic than many other seeds and nuts. They are a potential source of anti-cancer drugs. In Ayurveda, paste of Poppy seeds is used with milk and applied on skin as moisturizer. It is also used in certain cases for treating asthma, stomach illnesses and bad eyesight. The paste of poppy seeds have a light sweet taste and a little amount if taken with water, soothes the nerves, and helps to relax the body.

White Poppy Seeds (image from: http://indianculinaryguide.com)

In Bengali Indian cuisine the white poppy-seed paste is cooked with potatoes and many other vegetables. It is also a much-preferred veg-curry with rice and lentil soup (daal). Many Bengalis from India and Bangladesh vouch that there’s hardly any better way to have a sumptuous meal than to have rice and lentil soup with any of the “posto-bata” (paste of poppy seeds) recipes like “alu-posto” (with potatoes), “pnyaj-posto” (with onions), “jhinge-posto” (with luffa) and the all-time favorite, the “chingri posto” (with prawn).

Other than the Indian cuisine, poppy seeds are also the preferred ingredient in some parts of European & Jewish cuisine as well.

So don’t just limit yourself with the regular ingredients, to prepare the next meal – especially an Indian meal! Just make a little amount of poppy seeds a part of your healthy kitchen.

To know more about the one of the many uses of poppy seeds in Indian cuisine, please watch this space for my next post.

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