Use-it-everywhere green sauce
Including in this pulled chicken
When the author Lauren Groff sets out on a new novel, she writes the whole thing in a notebook and seals the writing in a box. Then she starts again. “The idea is that this way, only the best, most vital bits [of the first draft] survive.”
This is how I justify never writing down recipes I’ve made or want to make: only the important ones live on. Fingers crossed.
Recently, flashes of these long-lost recipes have been flashing more often than usual. One glamorous Saturday night, my boyfriend and I were both working late when a pang for cinnamon toast hit, something I hadn’t thought of since the snack consumed my life a few years back.
It also happened earlier this year in the Coachella Valley, where I was not going to Coachella but eating heaps of dates. I finally, finally made Samin Nosrat’s cilantro-date chutney, a mash-up of two Parsi chutneys from Niloufer Ichaporia King, to go with a braised lamb leg, potatoes, citrus-avocado salad, and trail mix chew for friends.
Then weeks later, back in New York, friends asked for raita to eat with biryani, mustard seeded snap peas, and a watercress-Asian pear salad(!), so I made raita, and also the chutney.
Green chutney on the mind led me (back) to Meera Sodha’s cilantro chutney chicken, which I hadn’t made since 2015, when I cooked and cooked from Sodha’s wonderful book Made in India. (What I would do to get my paws on her next book.)
In Sodha’s recipe, you brown aromatics and cubed chicken thighs, then pour in cilantro chutney and steam-simmer until the chicken’s cooked. Liquid is only coming from the chicken and the chutney, so the chicken is juicy instead of stewy, and the chicken fat can sizzle the herbs.
Cooking chicken in a green herb paste can be found in Hyderabad, down to Goa. Sometimes called hariyali (“greenery”) chicken, the green paste has herbs, chile, lime, spices, and sometimes spinach, nuts, and green mango or other fruits. Sometimes it uses bone-in chicken, other times boneless.
Sometimes the green chicken has more of a gravy—masala style—that’s creamy with ground nuts, cream, and/or yogurt. Other times the paste cooks down so much that all the liquid evaporates and the chicken starts to fry; this is a dry, or tikka, style, often served as an appetizer. If you do one thing today, please watch this. Who needs a food processor?
Today’s recipe is a mash-up of Nosrat’s chutney and Sodha’s chutney chicken, two forgotten-then-found recipes. Cinnamon toast can be dessert.
When you follow Sodha’s cooking method using Nosrat’s chutney, the dates make the sauce sticky/jammy. Instead of cubed thighs, today’s recipe uses whole pieces that you then pull with forks so the chutney really gets in there. Some other tweaks and prods were made along the way, too.
From Cybelle Tondu, who tested the recipe:
This dish is a stunner! I wasn't really sure what to expect, but the flavors worked so well together. The sweetness of the dates deepens and complements the vegetal cilantro nicely. It looks and tastes like it takes a lot longer to make, but is easy to throw together.
Using your memory to guide your cooking means you never know what will bubble up. The randomness, surprise, awe! Will this date chutney chicken make it into the memory bank? Check back in a few years.
