Inventor of Chicken Tikka Masala dies

Originally published at: Inventor of Chicken Tikka Masala dies | Boing Boing

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You mean all this time we’ve been enjoying Scottish food?? Mind blown.

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I look up British Indian Restaurant cooking channels on YouTube. I don’t even know what authentic Indian cuisine is like.

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And in another leg of the trousers of time, he just tossed it in with some mushy peas.

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Some dishes aren’t particularly difficult to make but it can certainly seem intimidating :slight_smile: i’ve made 3 Indian dishes with varying degrees of success but the one i’ve really nailed is chickpea curry (coincidentally making it for my vegan gf for xmas over at my parent’s place later today). I do recommend finding a simple indian dish to try to cook well, you’ll seem like an absolute wizard when you serve it to friends & family.

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the rick stein criteria is on the up and up…

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The main photo is not… chicken tikka masala. Nor the inventor

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Mr Aslam, we never met, but thank-you for making the world a better place.

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“Authentic Indian cuisine” is about as well-defined as “authentic European cuisine” (which would have to include everything from lutefisk and cassoulet to haggis, Viennese schnitzel, and gyros). The place is enormously huge and culinary preferences vary wildly depending on where you are.

What we tend to think of as “Indian” cuisine, including tandoori cooking and basmati rice, is mostly the cuisine of the Punjab, a northern area that is today located partly in India and partly in Pakistan.

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Mmmm, haggis made with lutefisk

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I indeed can be made with many things.

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Just as long as they are shoved into your stomach lining and that is then boiled, of course. :wink:

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That’s my love language.

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It’s all about the spices and how you integrate them. Check out Madhur Jaffrey’s Spice Kitchen. Years ago (decades, actually :confused:) I was talking with a friend about how frustrating I found using dry spices. She showed me this book and it changed literally everything about how I cook. The concept of a tarka is applicable in pretty much any cuisine and allows you to build flavor into the dish from the first moments. Usually this is done into an oil base, but Madhur also talks about dry roasting and toasting to coax out specific flavors.

ETA: That wiki link it titled differently to encompass all cuisine of the Indian subcontinent, apparently, but it’s the same idea. Start with the dahl variations; they’ll give you the best and easiest sense of how to utilize tarka.

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I grew up using this book. Still use it on a weekly basis

Sahni laments that Classic Indian Cooking mainly focuses on the cooking of North India, “because that is what people were cooking,” she explains. She hopes to remedy that with a new book she is working on; it catalogs the recipes of the far-reaching Indian diaspora which extends from Fiji to Trinidad and beyond.

still it’s far better than adding curry powder to an existing cuisine.

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Apologies for the ignorant question, but what are the key differences between butter chicken and chicken tikka masala?

Butter chicken seems richer and creamier, but, for me, that’s mostly a mouth feel distinction. The flavors seem nearly identical. Every restaurant that offers one seems to offer the other as well, which I always though was rather redundant.

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No such thing as an ignorant question asked in good faith. They are really similar dishes. Butter chicken is richer and creamier; a good tikka masala should have more of a tomato and onion hit and can be a good bit hotter depending on the chef.

They are both magnificent; but I would usually go for a dhansak if there is one on the menu.

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Thee difference is BUTTER! Also, Tikka Masala has onions
This describes both, and differentiates the two.

I make butter chicken quite a lot-- it’s tandoori chicken, browned in butter and then cooked in a tomato ginger pepper puree.

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Check out (if you haven’t already, natch) glebekitchen.com. The Hotel Gravy recipe is a fuckin’ revelation.

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