Ingredients

• 500gm chicken on bone
• 2 big onions finely chopped
• 3 tomatoes finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon cashew nuts paste
• 8 cloves garlic finely chopped
• 2 inch ginger minced
• 2 green chillies finely chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon red chilli powder
• 3/4 teaspoon coriander powder
• 2 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon garam masala powder
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 2 green cardamoms
• 1 star aniseeds
• 1 clove
• 1 teaspoon kasuri methi (dried fenugreek)
• 2 tablespoon ghee /oil
• A pinch of red food color
• Salt to taste

Instructions

1. Clean the chicken pieces in tap water and apply salt and lemon juice all over on chicken pieces. Cover and Keep aside.
2. Melt the ghee in a non-stick pan and add bay leaf, clove, cumin seeds, cardamoms and aniseed.
3. Saute altogether for few seconds. Add finely chopped onion and keep stirring. Add green chillies, ginger and garlic and continue saute till oil begins to separate. Now add fine chopped tomatoes, salt and spices.
4. Reduce the flame and cover the pan for 2 minutes. Uncover and keep stirring until the onion-tomato mixture softened and seems like a bhuna paste. This procedure, we could have done through the chopper, but I deliberately needed finely chopped onion, ginger, garlic and tomatoes with the hands, because you can really feel the bhuna taste in this way, so keep stirring and trust me your time is worth for everything here. After few minutes of cooking on low flame, add chicken pieces and saute well with bhuna mixture.
5. Add 2 cups of water, cover the pan, simmer the flame and leave to cook until chicken is well done. In between, put a drop of food color, mix very well by adding dried fenugreek as well.
6. After 8-10 minutes, mix the cashew nuts paste very well in chicken pieces. Finally garnish the dish with fine chopped coriander leaves.

Notes