I've bought a number of books in a series with names like “Asia: The
beautiful cookbook”. They're well named: the photography is good, much better than
the recipes.. Still, they have some interesting recipes that I haven't seen elsewhere, and
today I decided to cook a purported Goanese dish, “Murgh Moelho”. It was pretty
clear that the quantities were wrong; even the various pieces of chicken in the photo didn't match the recipe, which
called for drumsticks only. Searched the web and found very few recipes, all word for word the same as in the
book; even the photo was on the web. The following recipe is my interpretation, somewhat
hampered by not knowing the original.
Ingredients
I always weigh solids. In particular, things like “clove of garlic” or “big
onion” mean nothing. The “traditional measures” column below is for
convenience only if you don't have any way to weigh the ingredients. Don't use it if you can
help. See the weights and measures page for more details.
| traditional measure |
quantity |
ingredient |
step |
| 2 tablespoons |
25 g |
cummin seed |
1 |
| 1 tablespoon |
15 g |
white mustard seed |
1 |
| 1 teaspoon |
5 g |
turmeric powder |
1 |
| ½ teaspoon |
2.5 g |
chili powder |
1 |
|
|
150 ml |
vinegar |
1 |
| |
|
|
1 kg |
chicken thighs |
2 |
| |
| 3 cloves |
12 g |
garlic |
3 |
| 1 large |
300 g |
onion |
3 |
| |
|
|
|
ghee for frying |
4 |
1: The spices
Heat the whole spices gently in a dry frying pan until the mustard seed starts to pop. Grind
and add any powdered spices. Add the vinegar and make a pasted.
2: The chicken
Peel the skin off the chicken and prick the flesh. Rub in the spice paste and leave for at
least an hour, preferably longer.
The original recipe said 30 minutes. That's what I did, but I suspect that overnight would
be better.
3: The garlic and onions
Cut the onions into thin strips and start frying in the ghee over low heat. Crush the garlic
directly into the pan and fry until the onions brown.
The original recipe wasn't clear about how to chop the onions, and the photo doesn't show any onions. But in
general there are two ways to use onions in these dishes:
-
Finely chopped, preferably pureed, to give body to the sauce. These onions should
not be browned.
-
Chopped in slices as decorations. They may or may not be browned.
As a result, I decided to make slices.
Remove the onions from the pan and squeeze out the remaining ghee. Put into a cooking
pot.
4: Fry chicken
Add more ghee if necessary and fry the chicken in a single layer (in several batches if
necessary) until brown on both sides. Add to the cooking pot. Put the remaining marinade paste
into the frying pan and fry until dry. Add to the cooking pot.
5: Cooking
Rinse the frying pan with water and add to the cooking pot, topping up to barely cover the
chicken. Add salt, bring to the boil and simmer for 45 minutes. Allow to cool and wait
overnight before warming up and eating.
Other murgh moelho recipes
There only seems to be one recipe out there. The best one is in Dutch: it includes the
photo mentioned above. The English
translation does not have a photo.
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