Evening Standard/Spring 2003

Lindsey Bareham's Recipe section features Pinky Lilani's Coriander Chicken

Preparation: 20 minutes. Cooking 30 minutes. Serves 4

Pinky Lilani smiles out from the back cover of her new cook book with a twinkle in her eyes. She has much to smile about. Pinky, born and brought up in Calcutta but domiciled here since 1978, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, chair of the Asian Women of Achievement Awards, a development consultant with some of the major food companies in Europe, and adviser on a range of Indian food products stocked by Sainsbury's, Safeway and Tesco.

She also finds time to give Spice Magic Indian cookery seminars, and it is their success that led to writing and publishing an idiosyncratic book by the same name (Development Dynamics, £12.99). The slim and charmingly designed paperback - subtitled An Indian Culinary Adventure - is written with a clean, fresh style, packs in a guided tour to the food of the different regions of India, singles out popular dishes such as jalfrezi, korma, pilau and vindaloo for special attention, and gives useful tips on cooking technique and ingredients. The actual recipes are family favourites and blessedly easy to follow.

My copy of Spice Magic is peppered with yellow stickers denoting dishes I plan to cook, but my first effort was this delicious so called dry dish (which I've made wetter by doubling the amount of tomato and slightly reducing the quantity of coriander). Pinky suggests serving it with parathas or chapattis or other flat bread such as naan to scoop up the chunks of red and green chicken. I also served a lazy version of raita made by stirring Greek yoghurt with grated cucumber and a diced tomato. For convenience sake, I used skinned and boned chicken thighs rather than the 900g chicken cut into 8-10 small pieces that Pinky suggests.

To cook

8 boned and skinned chicken thighs
Salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp pureed garlic (about 10 cloves)
1/2 tsp pureed ginger
1/2 tsp turmeric
8 tbsp cooking oil
4 green chillies
400g tinned chopped tomatoes
150g finely chopped coriander

• Combine a generous pinch of salt, the black pepper, garlic, ginger and turmeric in a bowl and leave the chicken to marinate in it for at least 30 minutes and as long as 24 hours.
• When you are ready to cook, heat the oil in a lidded frying pan and fry the chicken, a few pieces at a time, until crusty and browned.
• Set aside. Remove most of the oil from the pan, leaving approximately 1 tablespoon.
• Return all the chicken pieces to the pan, cover and cook over a low heat for about 10 minutes until cooked through.
• Meanwhile split the chillies, scrape away the seeds and chop finely.
• Add the chillies, tomatoes and coriander to the pan, stir well, reduce the heat to very low, and cook for 10 minutes before serving.