Murg Kali Mirch Ka ( Black Pepper Corn Chicken)

A marinated chicken recipe with distinctive flavors of black pepper corns, Green chillies and curry leaves

Ingredients:

• 1 pound chicken cut in 2” pieces
• 1 tsp fresh Ginger paste
• 1 tsp fresh Garlic paste
• 2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper corns
• 1 tsp white pepper powder
• 3 tbsp cooking oil
• 2 tbsp vinegar
• 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 3 green chillies slit lengthwise
• salt to taste
• 6-8 curry leaves

Method:

• Prepare a paste by mixing ginger garlic pastes with salt, black pepper and white pepper, vinegar.
• Rub the paste on the chicken pieces. Leave aside for one hour.
• Heat oil in a skillet and add green chillies and curry leaves. When they stop spluttering add chicken pieces.
• Stir fry for 10-15 minutes.
• Lower the heat and simmer until chicken is tender. Add 1/2 cup of chicken stock if needed.
• Add lemon juice
• Garnish with green chilies and serve hot

Do You Know?

Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is a flowering vine, cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. In dried form, the fruit is often referred to as peppercorns. Peppercorns may be described as black pepper, white pepper, red/pink pepper.

Black pepper is produced from the still-green unripe berries of the pepper plant. The berries are cooked briefly in hot water, both to clean them and to prepare them for drying. The heat ruptures cell walls in the fruit, speeding the work of browning enzymes during drying. The berries are dried in the sun or by machine for several days, during which the fruit around the seed shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer, the result of a fungal reaction. Once dried, the fruits are called black peppercorns.

White pepper consists of the seed only, with the fruit removed. This is usually accomplished by allowing fully ripe berries to soak in water for about a week, during which the flesh of the fruit softens and decomposes. Rubbing then removes what remains of the fruit, and the naked seed is dried. Alternative processes are used for removing the outer fruit from the seed, including removal of the outer layer from black pepper produced from unripe berries.