Chicken Vindaloo
The easy way.

Chicken vindaloo is one of my favorite dishes of all time. When I go out to eat at an Indian place, this is genearlly what I'll order - and the hotter the better, as far as I'm concerned. However, cooking a proper vindaloo can be really complicated.

I've tried on several occasions to make a vindaloo from scratch based on numerous recipies found on the web. They were all, without exception, total disasters. Then, out of nowhere, Nina found this vindaloo paste at an international grocery store in Albuquerque. It is made by a British company called Patak's. The paste takes all the guesswork out of the spices and their relative amounts, etc. You see, once the spices are taken care of, a vindaloo is really just chicken, onions, and tomatoes (and sometimes potatoes).

Now I know what you're thinking - vindaloo from a jar can't be nearly as good as a made-from-scratch vindaloo. And you're probably right. But this stuff comes really darned close to a good resteraunt-quality vindaloo - and it's way better than the stuff I tried to make from scratch.

The jar of paste comes with a recipe for shrimp vindaloo on the label. Here I've just modified the recipe slightly for chicken and doubled the serving size. I'm going to modify it again soon to add potatoes, which I think are great in a vindaloo.

You can buy Patak's sauces online at Worldfood.

Ingredients:

Instructions:
In a deep 10" saucepan, heat the oil on high and then toss in the onion. Saute until some brown spots just begin to appear, stirring regularly.
Reduce heat to medium, add the chicken chunks and stir constantly until chicken is white on all sides.
Add the curry paste and stir until it is uniformly coating the chicken.
Allow this to cook for one minute, then add the tomatoes and water and increase the heat to high.
Once it reaches a low boil, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until desired thickness has been obtained, stirring occasionally. In general, this should take 45 minutes or so.
And it's done! I suggest placing the vindaloo over rice and serving with a bread of your choice and, perhaps, some chutney. Patak's makes a great spicy mango chutney, for instance.