Karivepaku Kodi

Andhra chicken fried down in a near-black masala of curry leaves, pepper, and Guntur chilli

Origin: Andhra Pradesh & Telangana, India

From the journey of Curry Leaf.

Kodi is chicken and karivepaku is curry leaf, and the name tells you the proportions: this is a curry leaf dish that happens to contain chicken. Three or four packed cups of leaves go into it. They are fried in oil until they darken and crisp, ground with roasted spices into a coarse dark paste, and then cooked down with the chicken until the whole thing is nearly black and clinging. Nothing else in Indian cooking treats the leaf at this scale, and it produces a flavour quite unlike a tempering: deeper, more bitter, more resinous, closer to the smell of the crushed leaf than to the bright note the leaf gives when flashed in hot fat. Andhra and Telangana cook hotter and drier than the coastal south, and this is a vepudu, a dry fry, rather than a gravy dish. The liquid is cooked off entirely and the masala is meant to coat rather than to pool. It is served with rice and a bowl of rasam or with ragi sangati, the millet ball that is the Rayalaseema staple. The chilli is Guntur, the fierce variety grown in the district of that name, which supplies a large share of India's chilli and gives the region's food its reputation. Its heat sits under the curry leaf rather than over it. The dish is comparatively modern in its restaurant form, but the technique of frying curry leaves down into a masala is old and domestic, and the same idea produces karivepaku podi, the powder on the same shelf.

Ingredients

Chicken

  • 800 g chicken, bone in, cut into small pieces

Marinade

  • 1 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp plain yoghurt
  • 1 tbsp ginger and garlic paste

Masala

  • 80 g fresh curry leaves, stripped from the stems
  • 8 whole dried red chillies, preferably Guntur
  • 1 tbsp coriander seeds
  • 2 tsp black peppercorns
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 tbsp chana dal
  • 6 cloves garlic

Cooking

  • 6 tbsp groundnut or sesame oil
  • 2 whole onions, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp black mustard seeds

To Finish

  • 1 sprig fresh curry leaves, for finishing
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice

Method

  1. Toss the chicken with the turmeric, salt, yoghurt, and ginger-garlic paste and leave for 30 minutes.
  2. Heat 2 tbsp of the oil and fry two-thirds of the curry leaves over a medium heat for two to three minutes until they darken and crisp. Lift them out.
  3. In the same oil, roast the dried chillies, coriander, peppercorns, cumin, and chana dal for two minutes until fragrant, then add the garlic for thirty seconds.
  4. Cool, then grind the fried curry leaves with the roasted spices and garlic to a coarse dark paste, adding a splash of water.
  5. Heat the remaining oil in a heavy pan, pop the mustard seeds, then fry the onions over a medium heat for ten minutes until deep golden.
  6. Add the chicken and fry hard for eight to ten minutes until it has sealed and released its liquid.
  7. Stir in the ground curry leaf masala, lower the heat, cover, and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  8. Uncover and continue on a medium heat for a further eight to ten minutes, stirring, until all the liquid has gone and the masala clings darkly to the meat.
  9. Fry the remaining sprig of curry leaves in a little oil until crisp and scatter over with the lemon juice.

Notes

Eighty grams of curry leaves is four or five large sprigs and is what the dish is named for. Reducing it produces a decent Andhra chicken fry and not this dish. Guntur chillies are fierce. Use half the quantity, or substitute Kashmiri, for something less punishing. Bone-in chicken cut small is traditional and gives far more flavour than breast. Thigh works well. It keeps two days refrigerated and the flavour deepens, though the crisp topping needs redoing. Serve with plain rice and rasam, with ragi sangati, or with roti, and a raw onion salad with lemon.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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