Roti Chicken

People, I've discovered a new and awesome food blog. It's called Kayotic Kitchen, and it is run by a Dutch girl who, for someone who lives in the Netherlands, provides an amazingly diverse collection of recipes. More impressively, she takes amazing food pictures for her posts, making all her recipes look colorful and appetizing.

Even though most of her recipes look amazing, this one for roti chicken is the one I decided to make first. Roti chicken is a Caribbean dish of chicken and bread, and this version is apparently a Surinamese version. Tasty as the chicken is, the roti (bread) is by far the best part of the dish. Normally I do not make bread, but this roti was not too difficult and the little effort is well worth it, as the mixture of mashed potatoes, chile, and garlic provide incredible flavor. Also, even though this recipe calls for a habanero pepper, the final products are not overly spicy.

Ingredients

Roti potatoes

• 2 large chicken fillets (about a pound), cut into bite-sized pieces.
• 27 oz potatoes
• 7 oz green beans, washed, trimmed, broken in half
• 1/2 habanero pepper
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, grated
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• 1 1/2 tsp curry powder
• pinch ground cumin
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1-2 chicken stock cubes
• 4 tbsp sunflower oil
• 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp water
• Salt and pepper

Roti pancakes

• Mashed potatoes, from above
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/2 habanero pepper
• 9 oz self rising flour (if you don’t have self rising flour, for each cup of all-purpose flour add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and about 1/2 tsp salt. Instant self-rising flour.)
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp lukewarm water
• Salt

Instructions

1. Make the roti dough. Peel and wash all the potatoes. Take 1/3 of them and cut into coarse pieces. These will be used to make mashed potatoes. Salt the water, bring to a boil, and cook the potatoes until very tender. Cooking time depends on how small you cut the potatoes. (Cut the rest of the potatoes into slightly smaller pieces, and save them for the chicken.)
2. De-seed the habanero, put half in a mini food processor, add 2 garlic cloves and a pinch of ground cumin, and blend.
 Alternatively you can use a fork or a mortar and pestle to mash it all up.
3. Drain the boiling potatoes. Add the garlic/chili mix and a tiny knob of butter, and mash them. Try to get them as lump-free as you possibly can. Season with a generous amount of salt and some pepper.

4. Put 1 1/2 cup self rising flour in a bowl, add 2 tbsp sunflower oil, 1/8 tsp salt, and 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp lukewarm water to the flour. Knead until it’s a supple dough, put it in a bowl, cover the bowl with a clean cloth and let it rest for 15 to 30 minutes.

5. Make the sauce. 
Heat 2 tbsp sunflower oil, add half the chopped onions, 1 grated garlic clove and cook for about 3 minutes.

6. Add 1 1/2 tsp curry powder, crumble up half the stock cube(s) and add it. Cook for a minute while you drain the potatoes you’ve kept in the water until now. Add the potatoes and green beans, give it all a good stir, and cook for another minute before pouring in 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp water in there as well. Put the lid on and simmer, over low heat, for 10 minutes.

7. Cook the chicken. In a large skillet, heat 2 tbsp sun-flower oil and add the remaining onions, garlic, and habanero. Cook for 3 minutes before adding 1 tbsp curry powder, the remaining stock cube (crumbled), and 1 tbsp tomato paste. Cook for 1 minute to sweeten the tomato paste.

8. Add the chicken and cook for a few minutes, until the chicken loses its rawness. Add the chicken mix to the potatoes and beans and stir.
 Season the chicken and potatoes with a generous amount of salt and optionally some pepper. Put the lid back on and simmer for another 20 minutes, until the chicken and potatoes are well done.

9. Make the roti bread. Divide your dough in 4 pieces. Sprinkle flour on top of your cutting board or counter top and form a ball out of each piece of dough. Push a hole in the middle. Put about 1 1/2 to 2 tbsp of the mashed garlic potatoes in the hole, and fold the dough around it.
10. Flatten the dough with your hand, sprinkle flour on top of it and roll it with a dough pin until you end up with a 1/4 inch pancake-ish type of construction.
11. More sunflower oil abuse! Pour some in a hot skillet and place the roti in the skillet. Now brush the top of the roti with the sunflower oil from the skillet and cook until it starts to form bubbles on top. Flip it over and brush it with oil once more. After about 2 minutes you flip it over once again and give it an additional minute.
12. Make all the roti pancakes and keep them on a plate, covered with a cloth, until you’re done. Serve with the chicken.

Serves 4-6. Eat them slowly.