Home made chicken curry with roasted spices from scratch

This was from my River Cottage Everyday cookery book, a baked chicken curry to rival the best restaurant.

Fragrant and beautifully spiced baked chicken curry

It was lovely and the spices were authentic, fragrant and so tasty, happily, not too hot, which is good as I can't do very hot spice.  The chicken was moist and falling off the bone, so lovely and a definite favourite curry around here from now on.

It is a bit of a fiddle roasting the spices and with several separate stages to prepare but we think it was well worth the effort, nothing shop bought can compare and we thought it tasted like a curry from a good restaurant.  Highly recommended from us.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall uses one whole chicken jointed or six skin on bone in pieces.  I jointed two birds and saved the crowns for other meals.  The River Cottage recipe serves 6, I made 4 portions and have frozen two with the bulk of the sauce as it can thicken up whilst frozen.

Serves 4 (as I made it)

Ingredients:

1. 4 whole chicken leg joints 
2. 2 tsp corriander seeds
3. 2 tsp fennel seeds
4. 2 tsp cumin seeds
5. 2 tsp turmeric powder
6. 2 tsp fenugreek powder
7. 1 fat thumb sized piece of ginger
8. 1 white onion, roughly chopped
9. 1 long chilli, I used a red one from my garden
10. 3 cloves of garlic
11. 1 tin of chopped tomatoes 400g
12. 1 tin of coconut milk 400g
13. 3-4tbsps sunflower or groundnut oil to fry the chicken
14. S&P

Method:

Pre heat the oven to 180C or equivalent.

Heat a heavy based frying pan and gently dry fry the spices until you can smell their aromas.  Either grind in a spice grinder or in a pestle and mortar until powdered.  This stage seems a fiddle but makes such a difference to the end result.

In a food processor blitz the onion, chilli and ginger and set aside in a bowl.  Now blend the tomatoes and coconut milk in the processor, no need to wash it out.  

Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in the frying pan and brown the chicken on all sides then place them in a large, deep roasting tray.

In the same oil, fry the spices adding more oil if they dry out too much, then in with the onion/chilli paste and mix well warming through.

Once the onion and spice mix has warmed for a couple of minutes pour in the tomato/coconut liquid and stir to combine.

Check seasoning and add S&P to taste.

Pour the curry sauce over the chicken scraping the sauce off of the skin so that it browns in the oven.  Cook for one hour and serve with rice, naan bread, chutneys and pickles.