Chettinad Chicken Curry

The dish that put Chettinad on the culinary map — chicken slow-cooked in a freshly ground masala of kalpasi (stone flower), marathi mokku (dried flower pods), star anise, long pepper, whole black pepper, fennel, and cinnamon, all tempered in sesame oil with curry leaves. Every element of the masala is ground to order, never pre-mixed, giving this curry an aromatic complexity unlike any other regional chicken curry in India.