Better than Chicken Tikka Masala

Friday, September 4, 2009

By Bear

Chicken Tika Masala is hailed as the great British invention, taking Indian food to new heights. The problem is that it is not very original, not very Indian and often not very nice. It is too rich, too creamy and too – well, let us just say there is a better way! The idea of taking grilled meat and mixing it with a sauce is far from new in most cuisine traditions, and this includes Indian. It is a technique I have used frequently for curries and is popular at home. There is one very good reason for cooking a curry this way – not overcooking the sauce. Certain sauces taste best when cooked hot and fast; it stops them becoming bitter and allows some ingredients like fresh tomatoes to keep their shape and retain their freshness. But the meat in a curry takes longer to cook – precooking it on a grill can therefore solve a lot of problems. Here is an easy recipe for your weekend using chicken thighs.

Ingredients

Boneless and skinless Chicken Thighs
Couple of large onions, minced
Loads of garlic and ginger made in paste
Lime / Lemon
Garam Masala
Salt
Peanut Oil
Good curry paste (Something like Bombay Authentics – really good)
bag full of nice fresh tomatoes
large bunch coriander, roots and all
Coconut milk (optional)

Okay, first lets sort out the chicken

It is up to you whether your leave the chicken thighs whole or not – or bone in or out. I like them whole as it reduces the risk of them drying out. Shove them in a bowl and salt them. Squeeze lime or lemon juice over them, cover and put aside for a short while. In the meantime, mix up a couple of table spoons of finely minced onion, a table spoon of the ginger-garlic paste, a desert spoon of garam masala and a couple of table spoons of oil. This is your marinade. Coat the chicken thighs with this mix and put in the fridge for a couple of hours or so.

Now, prepare the other bits

Remember that we don’t want our sauce to cook for very long, so this is just preparing to make things easier. Chop all your tomatoes up and finely chop the coriander. Okay that is the preparation done! Now, lets get cooking.

Grill the Chicken

Stick the chicken onto Metal skewers – unlike bamboo skewers, these will help speed up the cooking time. I like to cook on a charcoal barbecue (gas ones are really boring), but you can also cook these off in a hot oven. You can actually cook the chicken in advance, but to be honest this all works better if they come straight off the coals and into the sauce.

Make sure the chicken is cooked properly, but still moist – dry chicken wont stop being dry just because you put a wet sauce on it! If you are using lamb or goat instead, then make sure the meat is still a little pink – go on, try it! It wont kill you and is MUCH nicer!

Make the Curry

In a LARGE frying pan (get yourself a big one, much more versatile) or a WOC put in a couple of table spoons of oil and heat to medium to hot. Add the onion and the garlic and ginger. Cook, stirring often, till it all goes mushy. Now this you CAN do in advance. The Burmese start all their curries with this method. Cooking the onions till really soft and mushy makes for seriously good curries, but it does take about 15 minutes or so.

Once the onions are ready, put in some of Patricia and Maria’s Kashmiri Curry Paste from Bombay Authentics (or your own, if you like making it) and cook for a few minutes. Now add the quartered tomatoes and fry till they are just thinking about softening. Throw in a good couple of handfuls of Coriander.

Now, add the chicken thighs and stir them in, letting some of the tomatoes break up.

You now have a really nice curry and you have three options! You can eat it like that, or you can cook it a little longer, letting the tomatoes become sauce, or you can add a cup of coconut milk, cook for about two minutes then server – that will give a creamier, “masala sauce” feel to the dish.

Personally, I prefer eating it as it is with a couple of chapatis and a nice, hot lime pickle. (Oh, yes – pickles are for eating with the curry, NOT the poppadom!)

Well, the dish might be a little fiddly, but nothing complicated. A bit of practice, especially in getting the chicken cooked perfectly and still moist, and you will find you often use this method to make your curries at home.

Other variations include using monk fish, lamb or goat, grilled aubergine and so on. I also like putting tinned chickpeas (drained, washed and dried) into the curry as it cooks. But what ever your ingredients, make sure that the meat, once added to the sauce, is cooked for very little time as it will go tough. Oh, and don’t use small chopped pieces of meat as they will go tougher quicker – nice big chunks please!

Eat Well!

Tags: bombay authentics, chicken tikka masala, curry, recipe

This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 at 11:12 am and is filed under Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.