Murgh Methi (chicken curry with fenugreek leaf)

Paddington: One Bear to rule them all
You're a bear! Lay off the marmalade sandwich and just eat the fucking chicken!
Source: https://www.britishclassiccomedy.co.uk/paddington

Thanks to one of my Aunties who bought me a box-set of his books, Paddington Bear was a prominent figure in my earlier life. Let's face it, out of all the celebrity bears of the time, Paddington was the king. I mean, there weren't THAT many in the public eye, to be fair. Teddy Edward was OK, but pretty dull. Issi Noho was a panda, so only scrapes in on a technicality, and was shite anyway. Rupert the Bear was the worst though. Not only was he the most boring, self-righteous cunt ever portrayed on children's telly, but he was originally from a cartoon in the Daily Express, for fuck's sake, which is basically the Sun with delusions of fucking grandeur. I mean his programmes were so fucking long, and he has a history of casual racism (it's the Express, so he's hardly going to be feel out of place there). So, yes, Paddington was the man... bear (not to be confused with ManBearPig, see notes), despite being (or possibly because he was) an illegal immigrant. 

Don't have nightmares
Bears of my TV childhood (Teddy Edward, Issi Noho and Rupert. The stupid twat can't even do the actions to YMCA properly)
Sources: https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1970s/teddy-edward
https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1970s/issi-noho/
http://www.jedisparadise.com/3/Rupert_Bear.htm

As great as Paddington was, however, he was crap from a culinary point of view. All he ate were marmalade sandwiches. I tried marmalade sandwiches when I was under the thrall of the Peruvian ursinoid, and they were fucking awful, so it's a definite no-no. So, what has Paddington got to do with this recipe?

Parsley the Lion
 Source: https://alchetron.com/Parsley-the-Lion

The author of Paddington, Michael Bond, I discovered, also wrote the kids' programme that was the first exposure children of a certain generation got to any sort of cooking reference, The Herbs. The Herbs was a puppet show whose characters were the personification of actual herbs. There was Parsley the Lion (a lion with a green mane, who looks like the outcome of the Jolly Green Giant fucking a cat, see picture above), Dill the Dog (who looked like Su Pollard) and others who are a bit more foggy in my middle-aged mind. I remember some older lady character called Rosemary and something about a character called Bayleaf. So, in this age of instant access to pretty much all the accumulated knowledge of the human race (and yet people are still thick as pig shit. Go figure), I looked it up on Wikipedia, and this confirmed that there was indeed an aristocratic Lady Rosemary, along with her husband, Sir Basil, and Bayleaf was their gardener. There's nothing like reinforcing the British class system to kids at the earliest possible age so they know their place in society. They also had an Indian character who appeared once or twice, so you might wonder which herb they were named after. Well, it transpires that he was called pashana bedhi which, apparently, is another name for coleus amboinicus. This cooking blog has approaching 60 recipes, many of which being some sort of curry, but I've not heard of this particular herb (not that the name exactly rolls off the tongue). It's apparently some sort of fragrant plant otherwise known as Mexican mint, Indian mint and Cuban oregano. It's certainly not a common ingredient in anything I've come across, though I'm quite limited in exposure to exotic herbs, being a resident of grim and grey Northern England. So, why wasn't he called coriander, for example? That's the herb we usually find scattered on Indian food in the UK. Now, I love the flavour coriander it adds to Indian (and other cuisine, like Mexican for example), but it's an unusual ingredient in that it contains a certain substance that is tasteless to most people but tastes bad to a small minority. Mrs Sweary is one of those people, so I can't use it in dinner I cook for both of us. There's some really interesting science behind this and I could go off on another biochemical tangent on the physiology and genetics of taste, but don't worry, I'll leave that for another post.

Dill the Dog                              Su Pollard
How can you tell them apart?
Sources: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/fame-fortune/su-pollard-last-hi-de-hi-royalty-cheque-1120/
https://parody.fandom.com/wiki/Dill_the_Dog

The other major herb you might find in British High Street Indian cuisine is fenugreek, otherwise known as methi. Like coriander, it's the leafy part of the same plant as the spice seed of the same name used in curries. It's got an earthy flavour, not that dissimilar to its seeds (which in my opinion are THE component of curry spice that makes it taste of "curry"), but fresher and works so well in this recipe. Also, there's enough of the herb used that it almost becomes a vegetable in its own right. Not quite as much as, say, the spinach in a saag, but certainly a significant amount. It's a great, slightly different twist on the usual suspects from British Indian restaurants, though it is on the menu of a lot of curry houses.

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes plus marination
Cooking: 1 hour

INGREDIENTS
Marinade paste:
3-4 garlic cloves (medium), coarsely chopped
1 thumb-sized chunk of ginger, roughly chopped
1 shallot, roughly chopped
½ tsp salt
2 green chillies, roughly chopped

400g chicken meat (breast fillet or boneless thighs), cut into bite-sized chunks
2tbsp vegetable oil (a neutrally flavoured oil, like rapeseed)
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp fenugreek seeds
½ tsp ground turmeric
3 whole green cardamom pods
3 whole cloves
small piece of cinnamon bark (about 5cm)
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground black pepper
2 small onions, 1 sliced and the other roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 small piece of ginger (about 2cm cubed)
2 medium to large fresh tomatoes (about 200g in total weight). peeled and roughly chopped
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 green pepper, cored and cut into 2cm pieces
50g bunch fresh methi leaf, coarsely chopped

The ingredients
Clockwise from top left: methi leaf, ginger, garlic, spices, green pepper, tomatoes, onions, topped by one of my favourite knives

RECIPE
Pound the marinade ingredients into a paste using a pestle and mortar, or using a food processor.

Put into a dish with the chicken and mix well so that the chicken is well covered.

Cover the dish and put in the fridge to marinate for a couple of hours or so.

Heat 1tbsp oil in a pan and fry the spices for about a minute.

Add the ginger, the chopped onion and garlic, and fry until the onion is soft (add a splash of water if the spices start to catch on the pan, just enough to keep the mixture moist).

Add the tomatoes and the tomato puree plus 100ml water.

Bring to the boil, turn down the heat, cover, and simmer for about 20 minutes, until the tomatoes breakdown.

Allow this to cool and blend up into a smooth sauce.

In a clean pan, heat another tablespoon of oil and fry the chicken until cooked, adding any excess marinade. This should take about 15 minutes.

Remove the cooked chicken with a slotted spoon.

To the oil add the sliced onion and fry until soft.

Add the green pepper and continue to fry for another 10 minutes.

Throw in the methi leaves and allow them to wilt for about a minute.

Return the chicken to the pan, add the sauce and gently warm up.

Allow to the chicken to heat through and serve with rice and/or naan bread. Feeds two easily.

In the pan

Served up with plain rice and an aloo gobi

NOTES
Fresh methi or fenugreek leaf should be available from Asian grocers in big bunches. It freezes quite well, so use as much as you need for this then wrap the excess in foil (ideally in portions ready weighed out for recipes like this) and put in a freezer bag for use at later date.

This is another recipe where you marinate chicken in a paste made of onion, garlic and ginger (like this one). It does impart a deep, rich flavour to the dish, You could cut down the time in making this by coating the chicken with the marinade and cooking straight away.

Green pepper is a great addition to most curries as it's not too sweet and the taste is perfect for spicy food. Red pepper might work OK too, as would potato or something like aubergine or squash.

ManBearPig made a few appearances in South Park as a monster pursued by former Vice President Al Gore

I'm totally cereal
ManBearPig in action

Again, I think I've broken yet more new ground as the first cooking blog to drop the "c" bomb in the context of a well-loved childhood character. Now I've beaten that path, I look forward to hearing regular guest star, Rick Stein, calling Scooby Doo "a twat", Tom Kerridge naming Big Bird "a tosser" or Nadiya Hussain of accusing Peter Pan of being "a massive fucking nonce".