When it comes to quick dinners, I love dishing out pasta and experimenting with the sauce or the meat that goes in it. I was a bit bored of the regular white sauce or meat sauce and wanted something different. I remember watching this short ad segment on Food Network where Aarti Sequeira demonstrates a quick and easy butter chicken where she’d first marinated chicken in yoghurt, ginger and garlic pastes before frying and adding it in a readymade mix.

I thought I’d incorporate that style and come up with my own marinade, making my pasta sauce with that as the base. I’d run out of yoghurt and had to look for substitutes. By the time I fiddled around the kitchen and threw stuff in my marinade, it turned out to be a curry-based chicken. It was so yummy! The final dish didn’t taste completely like curry but, the hints of it added a beautiful touch. Bon Appetit!

Curried Chicken Pasta

Ingredients and directions:

For the marinade

• 1 teaspoon garlic paste
• 1 teaspoon ginger paste
• pinch of turmeric powder
• 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
• 1/2 teaspoon coriander powder
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• Season with salt

Mix all the ingredients together. Cut about 3/4 pound boneless chicken into small cubes and toss in the marinade and refrigerate for half an hour.

For the sauce

• 400 ml chicken stock
• 2 tablespoons dried minced onions
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 3 tablespoons tomato sauce
• 2 tablespoons cream

Heat pan. Put the chicken and the marinade in the pan directly and let it cook for a while. That’s right, you don’t need oil in the pan since the marinade already has olive oil, you can add a little bit of olive oil later on when you mix the pasta and it feels too dry.

Saute the chicken till they brown slightly on all sides. Add the chicken stock, minced onions, dried basil, tomato sauce and cream. Once the mixture comes to a boil, simmer and let the chicken cook completely, for about 15-20 minutes.

If the sauce is still very watery, turn the heat up to high and let the liquid thicken. I added some frozen broccoli and mushroom mix 5 minutes before it was done.

Toss with your favorite pasta and enjoy!