Chicken breasts are popular throughout the world and skinless breasts have become one of those little luxuries that most of us simply cannot do without. They’re extremely healthy, moderately inexpensive and absolute breeze to cook and turn into a huge variety of recipes. Garlic and ginger curry is perfect for the cold weather – the sauce in this recipe can be made a day in advance so that cooking this dish in the middle of the week is an absolute pleasure. Take care not to brown the garlic too much because the taste becomes so intense that you can’t taste anything else at all and more often than not, destroys the dish.

Ingredients

For the curry

• 4 x 140 g de-boned, skinned chicken breasts
• 140 g onions, roughly chopped
• 1 tbsp fresh ginger, finely grated
• 4 tbsp light extra virgin olive oil
• 1 lemon, grated zest only
• 6 cardamom pods, black seeds removed, crushed
• 6 allspice berries, finely crushed
• 1 heaped tbsp fresh ginger, grated
• 3 hot green chillies, finely sliced
• 1 tbsp yellow mustard seeds
• 5 cloves garlic, crushed into a puree
• salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste – take care with the black pepper

For the sauce

• 2 tbsp tomato purée
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tsp freshly ground cumin
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 1 tsp ground chillies
• 250ml  single cream
• Salt to taste
• cooked basmati rice, to serve

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180 C.
• Add a drop or two of water into a bowl and mix the tomato purée with it to make a smooth paste, then add the rest of the sauce ingredients, dry spices first.
• Season the chicken breasts generously on both sides with salt and freshly ground black pepper and then add  some oil to a non-stick frying pan and put it on high heat.
• As soon as it is hot, add the ginger, the cardamom and the crushed all spice berries.
• After a few seconds, place the chicken breasts in the pan (in a single layer) and fry them until golden on both sides.
• Remove the chicken breasts and place in a single layer in an ovenproof dish.
• Add the onions, the ginger and the green chillies to the frying pan that you’ve just used and fry this in the remaining oil until they are golden in colour and then remove from the pan and spread evenly over the chicken breasts.
• Add another little bit of oil and as soon as it’s hot, add the mustard seeds – when they start to sizzle, add the garlic and stir well, stirring until it just starts to brown – at this point pour in the sauce, warm it up and when it begin to bubble – pour it over the chicken, making sure that the chicken is covered everywhere and the onions are still on top of the breasts.
• Put the dish, uncovered, in the oven and bake for about 25 – 30 minutes – serve immediately with basmati rice.