Chicken Phaal

This one is NOT for the faint of heart. But it is delicious nevertheless. If you love spice, then this is the one for you. If not, I would suggest doing everything in this recipe apart from adding the chillies. Phall is one of those curries that was born out of the British curry house scene rather than back in South Asia. It’s generally traced to Bangladeshi chefs in places like Birmingham, who were already making things like vindaloo and thought, how far can we push this? So phall became less about tradition and more about bravado. A curry built to be stupidly hot, often using fresh chillies, dried chillies, even extracts, layered into a thick, tomato-based sauce. It’s not something you’d really find being cooked at home in Bangladesh or India. It’s a challenge dish, a bit of theatre, and very much a product of British curry culture rather than a centuries-old recipe.