Chicken Chaap

Adapted from : http://www.bongcook.com/2011/12/chicken-chaap.html

Ingredients

1. 1 kg chicken cut into four pieces. (you can cut into regular  big pieces)
2. 1 cup hung curd or yogurt
3. Juice of one lime
4. 50 mg. ginger paste
5. 50 mg. garlic paste
6. 1tbsp chicken tandoori masala (Recipe called for 1 tbsp. mace/jawitri powder)
7. 2 tbsp black pepper powder
8. 1 tbsp Kashmiri red chili powder/ Paprika powder
9. Turmeric
10. Salt
11. Sugar
12. 2-3 tbsp of poppy seed paste (posto bata)

Procedure

Wash the chicken pieces and pat dry. Now with a sharp knife score the chicken on both the sides. In a mixing bowl mix all ingredients other than oil and poppy seed paste to make the marinade. Mix them well with your hand and rub on both the sides of the chicken pieces.  Let it rest for overnight in the refrigerator. Take out the marinated chicken at least an hour before you start cooking to bring them to room temperature. 

In a frying pan heat oil. Now take out each chicken pieces shaking off its marinade and shallow fry till both the sides turn golden brown.

When you are done with frying add the marinade to the oil and allow the chicken pieces to get cooked inside it. Once the oil starts separating out from the spice mixture, add poppy seed paste and mix well.

Fry chicken pieces along with the poppy seed paste on medium low heat till the oil completely gets separated from the chicken. By this time the chicken pieces should be well coated with poppy seed paste.

Add some hot water towards the end if necessary to create gravy. Preferably chicken chaap should have lots of oil oozing out of it.Oily gravy i.e.