Chicken Sandwich

Chicken is a staple thing we have on the weekends, hence I had chicken in the freezer. I had recently found out a very nice chicken store in our neighborhood. Even after one week in the freezer when I defrost the chicken its still soft and fresh. So I decided I would make something with chicken. Chicken sandwich looked like a good option.

I checked on the net, and began searching for a nice chicken sandwich recipe. I specially wanted to avoid the recipes which were all heavy on mayonnaise. But unfortunately most of the chicken recipes I found on the net were either mayonnaise or cheese filled. Some of the indianised versions didn't sound good enough for me. After an hour of futile search I closed the laptop and decided to come up with my own version of chicken sandwich. I speculated between going for an all Chinese recipe or something more Indian. When the confusion between the two didn't appear to go, I thought why not a fusion of both? Thus the following recipe was born.

Preparation & Cooking Time: 25 mins

Chicken Mix

Procedure:
1. Clean the chicken pieces. Preferably select some fibrous pieces if possible devoid of bones.

2. Slice the onion longitudinally and chop the green chilli very finely. (If you are ok with having bigger chilli pieces then you can chop it that way)

3. Heat oil in a skillet and toss in the onion and chilli, fry till golden brown. Keep them aside to cool

4. In a deep bottomed wok take 3 cups of water. Put the cleaned chicken pieces in the water. Add 1 tsp of pepper powder, 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp of butter to the water. Cover the wok and turn on the heat. As the chicken gets cooked, the flavours of pepper and butter will get uniformly infused into the chicken pieces.

5. Boil the chicken pieces for 6-7 mins and then turn of the heat. Let it cool and then take out the boiled chicken on a plate. Note that the chicken should not be all mushy, it should remain a bit hard when you remove it from the heat.

6. Shred the chicken pieces using two forks and keep it in a mixing bowl

7. Add the fried onion and chilli, red chilli powder, remaining pepper powder, 2 tsp butter, curd, soya sauce, ginger garlic paste, oregano, cheesy spread, magic masala and a pinch of salt if required to the mixing bowl.  Mix everything together so that the chicken is well coated with all the ingredients.

8. Heat 2 tsp oil in a skillet. Add the remaining butter to the oil. You can add more according to taste. Toss in the chicken mixture into the skillet and fry it for 4 minutes, occasionally stirring it so that the mix doesn't stick to the bottom of the skillet.

9. Keep the fried mix aside. Take the bread slices, chop off the hard edges of the bread. Butter on side of the bread slices.

10. Now heat the skillet and keep the bread slices one by one, the buttered side facing the bottom of the skillet. Let the bread surface become slightly browned. Do the same for all the breads.

11. Lay the bread on a serving plate, the fried side facing down. Butter the other side of the breads lightly. Spoon some of the chicken mix on one bread and cover it with another bread. A total of 4 sandwiches are made. Cut the sandwiches diagonally and serve with some ketchup and potato chips as sides.

I am very self critical of my cooking. If I am not satisfied with the end result, no matter how much praise I get for it, I am not at peace. Today I was really happy with the end result, just the way I wanted it to be. More Indian and yet having all the right mix of Chinese flavor . Try this one and I bet you are absolutely going to love it.