Here’s a recipe with the very deceptive ‘roast’ in its name. An Indian‘roast’ basically means a dry dish with roasted and fried spices rather than one with a gravy. I have had ‘roasts’ mainly in the south – in Kerala and Bengaluru but I haven’t been to Mangalore where this dish is said to have originated.

In Kerala, they ‘roast’ by frying onions and then the spices in coconut oil. In Mangalore, a roast is made with ghee and usually contains chicken. The popular recipe ‘chicken ghee roast’ is said to have originated in a small town called Kundapur just outside Mangalore. The chicken is cut into bite-sized pieces and marinated in yoghurt, ginger and dry spices. The ghee is used to fry garlic and a whole bunch of other spices. This mixture is cooked with water and made into a paste, added to the chicken and the whole lot is cooked together until the masala is quite dry. In Chettinad chicken ghee roast, the marinated chicken pieces with bone and skin are fried in ghee first to render the chicken skin crispy.