Stew kolkata style

One of the purposes of posting photos and recipes on this blog is also to immortalize my mother in law's recipes. So here is the first one.

When the MIL was in the hospital recovering from her surgery, I offered to get stew for her one day for dinner. She gave me this recipe, it was an instant hit with the family.




ingredients
1/2 lb chicken boneless cut into small bitesize peices
1 lb vegetable mix (you can use anything, I used raw papaya, carrots, beans, potatoes, parvel or potol- I don't know what they call it in any other language, cauliflower or brocolli and cabbage leaves), all these vegetable have to be cut into large peices
2 tb ginger grated or paste
1 1/2 small onion gratde or paste
garam masala : cloves, cardamon, cinnamon, bay leaf
chicken stock
milk and
1 tb refined flour

method
1. heat a little oil in a pot or deep pan, heat till it smokes. Put the garam masala and let it splutter. Then add the onion and the ginger and saute till it brown a little on medium flame.
2. Put all the chicken, vegetables in, in the order they are cooked (potatoes first followed by carrots, raw papaya, parval, brocolli and cabbage). Saute for a couple of minutes once they are all in.
3. Pour in about 1 lt of chicken stock and let the the vegetable cook in the liquid.
4. Once the vegetables are nearly done, add the milk and sprinkle a the ref. flour in it. This is done to make sure the milk does'nt curdle and also thicken the liquid a little.. If the stock looks a little too liquidy, add a little cornflour to thicken it a little. The consistency of the stew should be thinner than thick soups. Put in a couple of bayleaves at this stage and voila! your stew is ready.
If you want ot make a veg stew, just leave out teh chicken and follow the same recipe with veg stock.
Serve hot with bread or pao