Serves: 4-5
Ingredients:
- Chicken legs – 1.5 kilograms (around 6-7 legs)
- Grind the following, for the marinade, to a fine paste using palm vinegar:
- Roughly chopped Coriander leaves – 3 cups packed
- Garlic – 50 flakes
- Ginger – 1″
- Green chilies – 8
- Cinnamon sticks – 6″
- Cloves – 1 heaping teaspoon
- Peppercorns – ½ teaspoon
- Turmeric – ¼ teaspoon
- Palm vinegar – ½ cup
- Sugar – 1 teaspoon
- Salt to taste
Method:
- Cut deep slits on the chicken legs and apply the ground masala. Set aside to marinate for 3 hours or longer (overnight works best).
- To a hot iron skillet on low heat, add a teaspoon of oil. Shake off the excess marinade from the chicken legs and slide them onto the hot skillet.
- Cover with a well-fitting lid and cook on low heat, flipping only when one side looks done.
- Flip the legs over, cover and cook the other side too with the lid on. If the chicken looks like it’s drying up, spoon over a few tablespoons of the saved marinade.
- Once both sides are done, continue cooking the chicken without the lid.
- Remember to spoon over more marinade as and when required to keep the chicken from drying up.
- After cooking all the chicken, bring the remaining marinade to a rolling boil and pour into a serving bowl.
- Serve with pão/undo/bread, a simple salad made from cabbage, tomato, onion, capsicum, chopped coriander leaves and a squeeze of lime and oven-baked potato wedges or fries.
Note:
- Reduce the number of chillies to cut down on spice levels. However, cafreal tastes best when it is spicy.
- A nice accompaniment with cafreal are thick sliced onion rings, quickly tossed in a wok with a teaspoon of oil until golden brown and then coated in a tablespoon of leftover marinade.
- I’ve used skinless chicken legs. You can keep the skin on if you like, but remember to make deep gashes to help the chicken marinate well.
- Instead of frying the chicken, you can also grill it all together in the oven until well done.
- If you don’t have vinegar, use lime or tamarind pulp.
