Mandy Yin’s chicken and squash curry. Photograph: Photography: Laura Edwards/The Guardian. Food styling: Joss Herd. Prop styling: Tabitha Hawkins. View image in fullscreen Mandy Yin’s chicken and squash curry. Photograph: Photography: Laura Edwards/The Guardian. Food styling: Joss Herd. Prop styling: Tabitha Hawkins. Indian food and drink From Malaysian chicken to Caribbean crab: four global curry recipes A Japanese fusion-fuelled garlic mushroom doria, an aromatic Malay chicken and squash curry, a rich Rajasthani papad ki sabji, and a Caribbean curry crab with roasted corn and dumplings
Prefer the Guardian on Google Mandy Yin’s chicken and squash curry (pictured top) Curry runs through Malaysia’s veins; it’s in every kitchen and at every food stall, whether run by Malays, Chinese or Indians. We tend to cook curries using either a wet spice paste ( rempah ) straight from the morning market, or a good curry powder – every household keeps a pack of Adabi or Baba’s in the cupboard as a fallback; we have no shame in this at all. Only when you’ve got time on your hands, or you’re cooking to impress, do you build a rempah from scratch.
My favourite curries come from the Mamak Tamil Muslim cooks behind Malaysia’s all-night kopitiams , who make the best roti canai going. Go for the roti and the meat curries alongside, washed down with teh tarik – strong black tea sweetened with condensed milk, pulled until it froths.
In my cookbook Simply Malaysian, I included my take on Dad’s Mamak lamb and potato curry. He starts with a whole leg, which he bones and trims himself, a heavy hand of curry powder, then the aromatics Malaysians call empat sekawan (the four friends): star anise, cassia, cloves, cardamom. Here, I’ve swapped the lamb for chicken thighs on the bone – they’re cheaper, quicker and what most of us reach for on a weeknight – and the potatoes for butternut squash. Pumpkins and gourds are a staple of Malay cooking, and are most at home in a coconut gravy, though they rarely share a pot with meat. So, squash takes the potatoes’ place and earns its keep, holding its shape and drinking up the sauce.
A word on the meat. In Malaysia we cook it in the curry it’s going to be served in – not seared or simmered separately and folded in at the end – so the two season each other the whole way. And we cook it on the bone, always: bone-in gives a richer, glossier sauce than any fillet will. Like all curries, this eats even better the next day, once the flavours have settled. If you’re not eating it straight away, reduce the cooking time in the penultimate step to 10 minutes (to allow the squash to finish cooking when reheating it). Any leftover sauce eaten with rice and a fried egg or two is one of life’s simple pleasures.
1 medium onion, peeled and roughly chopped 4 garlic cloves, peeled 1 inch (2½cm) piece ginger, peeled and roughly chopped 5 tbsp vegetable or peanut oil ¾ tbsp table salt 4 tbsp Adabi meat curry powder – alternatively, combine 1 tbsp chilli powder, 1 tbsp ground coriander, 1 tbsp ground turmeric, 1 tsp finely ground black pepper and 2 tsp ground cumin ½ tsp chilli powder 1 star anise 4 cloves 1 stick cassia bark, or ½ cinnamon stick 2 green cardamom pods, lightly bashed with a pestle to crack the skin 1kg skinless, bone-in chicken thighs 200g tinned chopped tomatoes, or fresh tomatoes, roughly chopped 1 butternut squash, or part of a pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and cut into 3cm x 2cm chunks (approximately 800-850g) 200ml coconut mi…