(upbeat music)
- Hello there.
Welcome back to another episode of "Arcade with Alvin,"
where this time we're gonna be attempting to make
the super spicy curry from Super Smash Brothers.
If you ever played Smash Bros with items, shame on you.
You might have picked up a flaming plate of curry
that made your character instantly spew out flames
from its mouth as you ran around with your head on fire.
In the game, I found that quite entertaining.
So let's see if we can make one in real life
that does this justice.
Since this curry is literally on fire, I assume
that there was alcohol of some sort involved in the process,
which led to us doing some research
and settling on old monk chicken curry,
an Indian-inspired dish we found off of YouTube.
You can find our reference videos below in the description,
but to start, we're going to go ahead
by chopping up two and a half pounds of chicken thighs.
But first we must make a very important component
for this dish, ginger garlic paste.
125 grams of ginger first gets peeled
and chopped into small chunks,
followed by 120 grams of garlic, also peeled.
This goes into a mini food processor
with a little bit of salt and just a tablespoon of oil,
and blend it until a nice little paste forms.
If it's a little thick, I like to add a little splash
of water just to make sure that this becomes a paste.
But this paste right here is one of the most
important things in a lot of dishes across Indian cuisine,
if I recall correctly.
Now, to marinade our chicken, I'm adding in
about two tablespoons of this ginger garlic paste
along with two teaspoons of garam masala,
two teaspoons of black pepper, two teaspoons of turmeric,
two teaspoons of coriander powder, one tablespoon
of Kashmiri chili powder, and 75 milliliters of dark rum.
This is looking a beautiful orange color,
so we're gonna take this and put it in the fridge
so it can set and get some time
to get the flavors all happy.
For the curry base itself, I'm starting by chopping up
one medium red onion, also known as one onion.
Moving to the stove we're heating up one capped cup
of vegetable oil or mustard oil,
and first fragrantly sauteing two bay leaves
with one teaspoon of cumin seeds on low to medium heat,
just to bloom the flavor a little bit.
After about one minute, I'm adding in our onions and a pinch
of salt and just sauteing until softened, not brown.
While that's going, I'm gonna take eight green chilies
and slit them down the middle just so that they can release
their entire firepower into this curry,
because this is a super spicy curry,
not just a spicy curry.
Homeboy, here we go.
The green chilies go in
for another one minute until fragrant.
And then I should have, but I forgot to add two tablespoons
of ginger garlic paste to the stir fry.
Go ahead and yell at me. I forgot.
Even though this won't taste as good as it should,
we're gonna continue by adding our tomato paste,
one quarter cup to be exact.
This gets stirred and combined until nice and fragrant.
Then we go in with our dry spices, two and a half teaspoons
each of the coriander powder, turmeric powder,
black powder, garam masala, and Kashmiri chili powder.
Now that we essentially have a roiling bath
of spice and flavor, in goes our marinated chicken,
straight in.
To loosen this up, I'm adding 200 milliliters of water
and probably just a little bit at the end
so that we can get a sauce base going.
I'm gonna go ahead and let this braise for about 30 minutes
on a low heat, just so that the chicken is tender
and everybody gets to have fun
with each other in this bathtub.
Just to make this extra super spicy,
I'm adding in another quarter cup of chili powder.
Now that the curry has slow simmered
and has reduced just a little bit
and our chicken is cooked through,
we're gonna take this off the heat
and get to the super fun part.
First onto a plate, we're gonna go ahead and give ourselves
a huge heaping of Basmathi rice that we cook according
to package instructions in a small pot.
Then we're gonna generously ladle about 75%
of the plate surface area with our chicken curry,
which is smelling really good about now.
So onto the actual flaming hot part.
The curry itself should be really spicy,
but we need to achieve those flames as is from the game.
So what do we do? Well, first we turn off the lights.
to make this more intimate.
To first create fire, you need to set the right mood.
Now, my initial plan was to ignite about half cup of rum
over this flame, but it does not seem to be catching fire
as I had hoped.
See if we can turn up the burner here.
Seems a little bit unsafe,
so we are going to try a pan method.
Okay, let's just put the rum in the pan.
Hopefully that ignites as well.
'Cause I'm pretty sure I've done this before
whether on accident or on purpose.
This also does not seem to be working.
Rachel has now come to assist and she has informed me
that using a different fuel source before the fire,
like a lighter, may achieve different results.
Aha. Now this, this is what I'm talking about.
Just like with baked Alaska or any other dishes
that require a dish to be set on fire,
I'm slowly sprinkling this flaming alcohol
over this plate of curry.
Whoa, look at that. The curry is now on fire.
I like that. I like this very much.
That was very fun. Let's do it again.
We're going to add even more rum this time.
Light it on fire and pour.
It also seems like the higher you pour it up from,
the more the alcohol will splash
and the bigger the flames will be,
which is something that I'm a very big fan of.
Once the fire has died down, it is safe to assume
that this entire plate of curry is pretty much drenched
in rum, but how much of it is actually burned off
from the flame?
Well, there's only one way to find out. It is time to eat.
Mm.
When eating curry, I highly recommend not pouring
an entire cup of hard liquor on top of it.
The alcohol seems to still be there
despite all of the flames that we have seen
and the spice is now making this worse.
Although I really can't taste much besides alcohol.
It really makes you feel
like you're eating a super spicy curry.
But how about a taste of this curry without the alcohol?
Take a little bit of rice,
take a little bit of curry from the pan.
And I have to say the flavors are really, really good.
The spice is hot, but the flavors are really nice.
The chicken is tender
and the rice helps put everything together.
So if you're a fan of spice and like to take the heat
as a challenge, this curry might be for you.
Just don't wear anything flammable.
(gentle music)