This Indo Style Chicken Veggie Curry is inspired by the Balinese cooking class I did when I was there on holiday. I love the Indonesian food so much!! Back home I made this dish many times, it’s very tasteful, healthy without any additives and easy to make. This curry paste is inspired on the original Bumbu Bali spice recipe; you can use this spicy paste for multi purposes.
What do you need for 4 diners of Indo Style Chicken Veggie Curry?
- 1 hour of your time
- Blender or other food processor
- Chicken breast: 400 gr cut into small parts, I mean 2 by 2 cm or so….
- Broccoli: 4oo gr chop in small parts
- Green beans: 3oo gr, clean and chop the bean in 3 pieces
- Bean sprouts: 100 gr
- Bell pepper/paprika: 2 pieces, cut into small pieces
- Zucchini: cut into small pieces
- Red onion: cut in same size as other vegetables
- Coconut oil: 2 tablespoons
- Coconut creamy cooking milk: 400 ml (use a good creamy one, not too watery)
- Cashew nuts: 100 gr unsalted
- Optional: Rice
Spices for Curry Paste
- Coriander leaves: 4 tablespoons, cut the leaves without the steels
- Shallots: 4 pieces
- Garlic: 5 big cloves
- Coriander powder/Ketoembar: 1 teaspoon
- Ginger: fresh 4 cm, take of the skin and cut it in big parts
- Turmeric: fresh 6 cm. Be careful with cleaning, you will get yellow easily
- Red chili pepper: 1 or 2 depending how spicy you like, clean and remove the seeds
- Shrimp paste: 1 teaspoon
- Lemon grass: 1 fresh crush and cut in 3 cm pieces
- Salt: 1 teaspoon
- Black pepper: 1 teaspoon
- Optional: Cayenne pepper to add more spice to the dish
Tip: As you can see I didn’t prepare the rice in this instance. I try not to eat too many carbohydrates, so I skipped them in this meal. You can prepare the rice together with this recipe if you want.
How to make it?
First we start making the curry paste. Clean and peel all the ingredients of the spices for the curry paste except the lemon grass in the food processor. Add one tablespoon of coconut oil to these ingredients. Mix until all the ingredients become a paste. During that cut and crush the lemon grass in pieces of 3-4 cm. Heat up the wok and then cook the paste and the lemon grass until it is soft and you smell the flavor. In between while the paste is cooking you can cut the chicken into small pieces.
Tip: I normally cut my chicken breast with a scissor. It’s must faster and easier to cut all the parts of that you don’t use. And it’s more hygienically because you don’t use a cutting board. I save a special scissor which I especially use for this.
If the paste is ready, leave half of the paste in the wok and put the other half in a cup. Put the sliced chicken in wok together with the paste. You don’t have to add new coconut oil because that is already in the paste, but you can add more if you want. While the chicken is cooking, start cutting all the vegetables like described above. Keep checking the chicken and when it is brown and ready add the vegetables to the wok. Wok for 5-7 min on high fire. Add the coconut milk and remainder of the curry paste in the wok with all the ingredients. Stir till everything is mixed ups and let it stew on a low fire for another 10-15 minutes. Stir now and then. Taste if the green beans are soft, then you know the vegetables are ready. Before you serve you add bean sprouts and coriander leaves to the curry and stir around, this way the bean sprouts remains crispy.
Prepare the plates with or without the rice and on top of the curry you put the cashew nuts and some coriander for decoration.
Be aware: The lemon grass is still in the curry, the structure is different which you can filter out of the curry during eating. Or you can take them out beforehand but then the taste of the lemon grass will leave the curry too soon!
Tip: If you eat the meal the next day, you will found out that it taste even better; the herbs have the time to get into the vegetables and chicken!!