Sweet and Sour Chicken ‘Rizala’
There is more than one style of rizala. The Dhaka rizala is neither sweet nor sour and is often served at the end of the Ramadan festival of Id. The Calcutta rizala requires that the meat be cooked entirely in milk or natural yoghurt. This north Bengali Bogra rizala recipe comes from my friend Yasmeen’s mother. It is a classic. Gently sweet and sour, it has a scrumptious dark sauce made entirely without spices that is rich with browned onions and natural yoghurt. Note that the chillies do not give much heat to the dish. They may, however, be bitten into if the diner desires.
Ingredients
- 3 small onions each about 75g (3oz), peeled, cut in half lengthways and thinly sliced
- corn or peanut oil
- 2 small onions about 175g (6oz), peeled
- 5 cm 2in piece fresh ginger, peeled
- 4 garlic cloves peeled
- 4 tablespoons oil saved from frying the onions plus 1 tablespoon ghee, or more oil
- 1 chicken about 1.75kg (4lb), skinned and cut into small serving pieces
- 6 tablespoons natural yoghurt
- 1½ teaspoons salt
- 6 –10 whole bird’s eye chillies with small slits cut in them
- 1¾ teaspoons sugar
- 2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice
Instructions
- Pour enough oil into a large frying pan to come to a depth of 3mm ( in), and set over medium heat. When the oil is hot put in the onions and fry for about 8 minutes. The onions will have begun to brown. Reduce the heat to medium–low. Stir and fry for another 2 minutes or so. Reduce the heat to low. Continue to stir and fry until most of the slices are reddish-brown – about 12 minutes. Empty the frying pan contents into a sieve set over a bowl. Spread out the onions on kitchen paper to dry. Once completely cool, crumble the fried onions and set aside.
- Peel and chop the onions, ginger and garlic and put them into a blender with 3–4 tablespoons water. Blend, pushing down with a rubber spatula when necessary, until you have a smooth paste.
- Put the oil and ghee in a large, non-stick, lidded pan and set over a medium–high heat. When hot, pour in the paste from the blender. Stir and fry for about 5 minutes or until the paste is lightly browned. Add the chicken pieces. Continue to stir for a further minute. Over the next 5 minutes add 1 tablespoon of natural yoghurt at a time and keep browning the chicken. Now add 175ml (6fl oz) water, the crumbled onions and salt. Stir to mix and bring to a simmer. Cover, reduce the heat to very low and simmer gently for 20 minutes, turning the chicken pieces over now and then. Add the chillies, sugar and lemon or lime juice. Stir to mix. Cover and continue to cook on a very low heat for another 10 minutes.
