Hi, Ray here again.
I’ve had a lot of recent success with the great range of Curry Focus recipes.
I’d seen the recipe for Chicken Xacutti a few months ago and thought that now was as good a time as any to make the dish for myself..
I think that Xacutti is a terrific name for a curry. There isn’t a lot of information about Xacutti on the internet except that it is a hot curry that was originally created in Goa (where the very hot vindaloo came from).
One thing that was obvious from the recipe was that there were lots of different spices in a Xacutti – far more than in a regular curry. And the recipe called for dry roasting and grinding the spices yourself (instead of using ready-ground spices). This was a lot of work and took me a full 25 minutes. I had problems with grinding the dry chillies and ended up discarding some pieces of skin because I couldn’t grind them fully.
The recipe called for the chilli seeds to be discarded but I couldn’t easily do this so left them in the mortar and pestle and ground them up.
I was soon roasting the dessicated coconut and from there the recipe was pretty much like a regular curry recipe.
I added the spice mixture to the frying pan once the onions were cooked and the mixture immediately became very dry. I continuously stirred the curry so that it wouldn’t burn and there was soon plenty of liquid once the chicken and hot water were added.
After that it was simply simmering and stirring the curry and cooking the basmati rice.
The dinner guests were eagerly waiting to try out the Xacutti as nobody in the room had ever tried one.
There was an initial silence while the first tasting took place and then there was a stream of compliments from around the table.
The Xacutti is a great curry with a delightful blend of spices. The chicken has a lovely texture and the sauce was very tasty. Surprisingly enough the spice level was only medium when I was expecting it to be really hot (the descriptions on the internet had said that a Xacutti was hotter than a vindaloo – but it wasn’t).
Everybody loved the Xacutti and it received a great score of 8 out of 10.
With 2 1/2 lbs of chicken breasts, this is a large curry that is more than enough for 8 people. We got two dinners out of the curry and there was enough left over for me to take apportion to work for lunch.
This is a great chicken curry that I you should try for yourself, if you love a tasty chicken curry. I’ll definitely be making this one again.