Value meal rescue mission 1 - Chicken Jalfrezi++ / Proper Curry prep / Face The Pain

 Value Jalfreizi /

Chicken 3 ways 3.5/3 - Dopiaza Preparation &

Insane Chilli tasting

Back in the cheap food game, folks...

I had promised to do a chicken dopiaza back last year  So now's the time to prepare, thanks to a lot of hints and ideas I've adapted from this incredible recipe from the Loving Bangladesh Kitchen blog, which you will have adapted for you in the next post.  Meanwhile, today it's preparation and adaptation of a frozen jalfreizi. 

Jalfrezi vs Dopiaza

A  jalfrezi and a dopiaza, are very different, but they both use cardamon, ginger, garlic, onion, tomato, bay leaf, cumin, and whatever other spices you have to hand.  Although as we'll see, a jalfreizi should be a dry curry too...  But this one was reduced from the T.

Behold, supermarket spicy foodgoodness.

The unboxed Tesco Chicken Jalfreizi, about to be heated.

I think this cost 80p.  The sticker wore off in the freezer, but it's around £2 - £2.50 normally.  You get some basmati rice with it and ... well, we'll see how it tastes on its own first.

While the oven is on (saving electricity and heat) I am also going to finish my onions and spice mix for the dopiaza, so all I need to do is add my chicken, any sides ( gobi aloo or spicy rice and ratia spring to mind) then heat, and add the sauce   

As well as the scary part.  Let's talk chilli tasting.


I am a chillihead for sure, but I have limits.  I once went to a chilli festival.  On sale was this Dorset Naga sauce.  It clocks in at about 1 to 2 million times hotter than a bell pepper (rated 1 on the Scoville scale) and still about 10,000 times hotter than the rocket chilli.  So, pretty much intense pain in fruit form.


I don't really remember what happened for about 30 seconds in between sampling a small drop, saying "Wow!  You can really taste the pineapple!...aaaaAAAAGH"  and then finding myself in my seat , tears streaming down my flaming face, begging, "Yoghurt!  Yoghurt!!  Aagh!  Can I borrow a fiver for that Naga sauce?  It's like CS gas, but ...aaagh...with fruity...aaagh...pineapple!"


So caution is the watchword but this is preparation.  You can't cook good value food if you don't know how to improve it.  And to improve it we must experiment to see what works.  Which means tasting.



Below you'll see a sweet pepper, which I used in the chackchouka I made, next to a regular chilli I picked up a bag for for about 30p, which was pretty fiery.  

Common or garden supermarket small bell pepper

Next, I found a massive bag of "rocket chillis" from Gambia, which are less than a penny a gram, and shall be pickeled.  Finally...

The rocket finger chillis on the left are hot.  The Trinidad Scorpions on the right are just evil...

... the last time I was in Dublin, I bought some Trinidadian Scorpion chillis, which, frankly, I am scared of.  But at €1 for around 25-30 of the things, it was only stupid to try and eat them all at once, just not to sample them before ruining a perfectly good dopiaza first! 

Tonight I'll be tasting a ready meal, plus 4 kinds of chilli, to see what will give my dopiaza the right level of heat.  

Method

Chillis
 - I added a little oil to the bottom of a casserole dish to bake and intensify the flavours.

I just looked up the Scoville rating for the scorpion chilli and it rates between 800,000 and 2 million.  Whuh-oh. 

Jalfreizi ready meal

"Remove cardboard sleeve.  Punch holes in film.  Add to a preheated oven" 

I cooked it from frozen for about 45 minutes at 150° instead of the recommended instructions - I think this has given the rice time to reheat properly rather than burn or dry out, but the sauce may have suffered the freezing process...  

Four Chilis in order of heat, small bell pepper, regular, green finger chili and scorpion chili...

First impressions of the jalfreizi au naturel, plus chillis #1 and #3:

*munch*
Yep, the sauce is wet; not very thick, but the rice has come out well.  One of the hazards with trying to cook two different ingredients the same way where they could be better prepapred separaertly, as well as freezing certain types of food. 

But tastewise...

Yum!  Quite fragrant, not overly spicy (yet...)  - the chicken is breast meat and comes in quite large chunks, which makes up for it being pretty poor quality chicken.  Despite the sauce being too runny and too based on tomatoes, there's a nice after kick to this, plus some layering of spices (I swear I could taste the bay leaf and cardamon).  I quite recommend this if you like hot but not insane ready Indian meals.  On its own this is a fine supper for 80p.

Now for chilli number 1 - sweet pepper, baked in a little oil.

As expected, it's almost sugary, and has zero heat.  A nice addition to any meal - would barbeque well, oven roast well, or ... go with anything really. Pickled with salt?  A bit of fish and sea veg?  Roasted peppers - lovely.


Now for the Gambian rocket chilli, also baked in some oil.

Ha-HA!  This hits like a drunk baritone opera singer at a karaoke night.  Not much front of mouth, all chest and back of the throat, loud, and lingers too long!  BUT... I think this chilli is the perfect accompaniment for a *really* hot jalfreizi, if you like your gums to water for a few minutes afterwards.  One of these would *really* fire up that ready meal.  I'm going to call perfect ingredient for jazzing up your supermarket Indian.   

 I *did* make the error of leaving the seeds and pith in, which, if you want control over heat (or not) you should carefully remove with a knife and use hand protection.  But after a slug of cream to let the dairy fat absord the capsaicin, I was fine.

I shall try chillis #2 (the normal T red chilli) and #4 (the "sorry boss, need to go home sick, can't see the computer screen for tears, also best no-one touches me." Trinidad Scorpion tomorrow for lunch with the remaining jalfreizi as leftovers.

Yum yum - not a bad and spicy improvement to a 60p frozen curry

 So far the dopiaza is going to have half a Ghanaian rocket and half a regular T chilli, in addition to the spice blend I prepared and baked with the sauce earlier, but more details follow next time.

Update

I ate the red T-chilli for breakfast (not as hot as I remember but still a good kick) and then...

For lunch I polished off the rest of the jalfreizi, plus... the scorpion chilli.

The first half was lovely, so much so I ate the second half too.  After about twenty seconds I got a nice fruity tang and then... well... it was a good job I remembered to bring yoghurt and cream with me.  Any oil will help absorb capsaicin.  Not the hottest I've ever eaten and to be honest, not a lot of flavour but oh the burn after about 30 seconds...

Thank-you cream, thank-you yoghurt, thank-you Pepto-Bismol® Phew!

I think these bad gals and guys are going to be preserved and turned into a fruity insanity sauce with pineapple and herbs.  Not for the dopiaza.

So there you are - 
1.  Can recommend the T's Hot Jalfreizi if reduced, and especially if you want to kick it up, with a halft of Ghanaian rocket chilli (finger chilli also would work)  Of course pickles, naan, extra sauce can all be added to strecth this.
2.  I'll be sticking mainly to the recipe I linked to in the opening paragraph next week, but using a regular and rocket chilli for heat.
3.  The scorpion chillis deserve their own post and Health and Safety regulation.  I'll deal with them at a later date.