Chicken Machboos

This weekend's Formula 1 Grand Prix is in Bahrain which was never going to be easy in terms of thinking of something to cook for my blog challenge Formula 1 Foods. I turned to the internet to search for recipes and one in particular kept coming up - a type of curry, usually with chicken, called machboos. Apparently it's the national dish of Bahrain and is a spiced chicken and rice dish with a blend of Arabic spices. It's similar to an Indian biriyani.



I found many recipes for this which were all slightly different and ended up choosing different elements of each; for instance my boyfriend doesn't eat chicken thighs or legs so I used breast; I didn't have any of the specific spice blend so mixed together what I had that went into it, and I have to admit making a big change that probably changed this dish quite a lot - rather than cooking the rice together with the chicken I used microwavable rice and added it afterwards. That is probably sacrilege but I didn't have much time (not getting home from work until 7pm and that's if the trains are running on time, which usually they are not) and I am hopeless at cooking rice from scratch!



So the recipe I used, pieced together from various others, was:

to serve 2:

1 onion, chopped

1 glove garlic, crushed

2 chicken breasts, diced

1/2 tsp black peppercorns

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1/4 tsp ground cardamom

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp turmeric

squeeze of lemon juice

1 tbsp. oil

200ml chicken stock

200g tinned tomatoes



Fry the chopped onion and garlic in the oil in a large pan then add the spices.



Add the chicken and fry until cooked through.



Add the tomatoes, stock and lemon juice and cook until the sauce has reduced by half.



Serve with rice

I'm sending this to Formula 1 Foods, the blog challenge I host - you've still got a few days to add any Bahrain or Formula 1 inspired recipes!