Shirazi Chicken ’69’ aka 65

You want to hear a world of urban legends and rumours? All you have to do is live in a hostel at least once in your life. Seriously, we used to hear an average of one urban legend (this girl hitchhiked alone from so and so beach, by truck and then ….) a fortnight to a rumour a day! Now that my level of interest in food is fairly established, I remember one such urban legend, well!

One of the most popular snack in the millions of bars in our student town, yes, you heard that right, millions of bars in our student town… well anyway, was Chicken 65. Now that we have broached this subject, Gurgaon is very much like that, there is a booze shop about ½ km from my daughter’s school and that stands good for all schools in Gurgaon. In fact one of the best ones has a booze store on either side, lest one of the students forgets to buy his stash for the day!!!! Chicken 65 is apparently on their menus as well. Anyway, back to my chicken 65 story. Now this is one dish that was consistently good no matter where you ordered it. It was good at the ‘hotels’ we had (brightly lit guest houses that sourced tea and breakfast from the snack outlet on the ground floor!), it was good at roadside bars, it was good at the beach shacks (every little beach has a little tea shack, that makes some of the best egg parantha’s ever!). So we were bred on a staple diet of Chicken 65, Khoday’s Rum, Bun Masala and the like (local cuisine, I’d say). The most well known facts about the origin of the name of this dish were that it had 65 ingredients (it doesn’t!) and that it was developed in 1965 (no one to corroborate that!). The urban legend we heard was the grossest, we heard that the dish was marinated for 65 days ….ewww, can you imagine the state of that chicken? What I believe as most plausible is the story about the army officers from the north that ate a restaurant when they were posted in the south. All the dishes on the menu were in the local language but were serialized, they loved dish no. 65 the most!

It’s been close to 15 years and we still can’t forget the aroma, the taste, the sheer perfection of this awesomely spicy, frighteningly orange chicken dish. We don’t have it that orange though we just skip the food colouring. We make it regularly and compliment it with typical canteen fare, watery ‘sambhar’ and rice. I do whip up a batch as a bar snack but that’s dangerous if you have more than 3-4 people, you have to make loads of this stuff. Chicken 65 is like peanuts if you combine it with booze, you need bowls and bowls of it! We at home like to call it Chicken 69 because throughout college Andy would call it that wherever we ordered it!

Shirazi Chicken ‘69’ aka 65

Marinade mix:

½ kg boneless chicken breasts
1 tsp red chilli powder (I use ‘Deggi mirch’ which is essentially the powder of red chilli skins, so its not as spicy and adds a lot of colour, I feel cayenne pepper is quite similar)
1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
1 tsp salt
1 egg
2 tbsp cornflour
3 tbsp white flour

Oil for deep frying

Tempering/Stir fry Mix:

1 tbsp oil
10-12 curry leaves
6 -8 garlic pods crushed
1 tsp ginger paste/grated
6 green chillies
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp red chilli powder
½ cup yoghurt
Salt

Wash and dry the chicken, cut it into 2” long strips, not very thick, so split the breast if you need to (ewww! At the thought, not the meat!). Marinate the pieces in a mix of the flours, spices and egg. I usually put it all on the cubes one after the other and work it with my hands, I don’t like to use water so if you try to make the marinade separately, chances are it will be weird and gooey. So coat the pieces nicely. Heat oil to the temperature of chicken nuggets and drop in the pieces one by one. Don’t make too much together, you will cool off the oil and then the pieces will just lie in the oil and get soggy, keep the fire up, the pieces moving and do them for around 2 minutes, till evenly light brown. Drain. In a separate pan, heat oil, brown the ginger and garlic, throw in the curry leaves and the green chillies, add the spices, stir and fry for 2 mins on low fire. Add the yoghurt, stir and let it come to a boil, add the fried pieces of chicken, stir and cook on high flame for around 2-3 mins or till the moisture evaporates. Try a piece to check if it’s done, if not, cover and cook on low for another 2-3 mins. Don’t overcook this, the chicken was boneless and deep fried, it can’t possibly be raw. Check the salt and serve.

We had this with a regular ‘dal’ the last time but I also like to serve it with a onion and tomato pulao.