Home Made Tandoori Chicken.

This is the easiest blog post I will ever write! A literal cut-paste job, since this is really step 1 of making butter chicken at home.

The Tandoori Chicken for me though is the best way to do and eat chicken. I remember, not long ago when we lived in the tandoori chicken infested north of the country, P and I would just order in some with no agenda. It would get eaten for dinner, then the leftovers would go into omelets, onto pizzas and work as wonderful stuffing into sandwiches (just a bit of hung curd blended with shredded tandoori chicken! Double Yum!).

Let’s get started

One chicken, cut into curry size pieces. Make some deep cuts in the chicken with a sharp knife

1 tbsp oil

Curd half a cup

Garlic – 6 pods mined 

Ginger – 1″ piece mined

1/2 tsp Salt

1 tsp Zeera (Cumin) powder 

1tsp Chilly powder

1/4 tsp Turmeric

1 tsp Dhania powder

So, get your oil and cup of curd, beat it lightly and blend in all the spices as well as the minced garlic and ginger. Rub this marinade all over your chicken, cover the dish and leave inside your refrigerator for 2 to 3 hours. (Get your chicken out from the fridge at least 30 minutes before you’re going to roast it).

Heat your oven to the max (mine goes to 240ºC), pile your marinaded chicken onto the slotted tray and get this into your oven. Remember, the marinade will drip down to the oven floor…. so if you want to avoid a mess later, do put a large piece of foil on the oven floor.

This needs 12-15 minutes. Do keep an eye on the chicken, since each oven has variable cook times to my mind. But your olfactories and a visual check will surely tell you when it’s done. I tend to do this about 15 mins, which cooks the chicken fully, but I still turn the chicken around and put back in the oven for 3 minutes to brown the undersides.

That’s it. The Tandoori Chicken is ready!

(yes, that’s a copy of Bombay Times to make mopping up easier!)

Butter Chicken. The most fun I have in the kitchen.

If it wasn’t for the move from Delhi to Bombay in 2006, this recipe would never have become part of my repertoire. In fact, and some may argue this, just the sheer lack of width of dining choices in Bombay (at least the parts we lived and roamed in), meant that one had to improvise in one’s own kitchen.


For the record, in Bombay, the only butter chicken that’s passed our taste-test was at the Copper Chimney. And amongst the best butter chicken you will ever have is at the Taj Holiday Village coffee shop (in goa). Discovered that a few weeks ago, and rue the fact that I did not go talk to the chef to find out more.


There are as many BC recipes as there are Indian cookbooks. The book I used many years ago is no longer in print (The Complete Indian Cookbook – Vimla Patil). Broadly though, some books prep this as a single dish and others as a two-stage dish… needing one to roast the chicken (good old tandoori chicken), and then amalgamate this with the curry. 


This is a slightly complicated dish – at least compared to other food that I work on in my kitchen. It has a couple of stages, need marination time, and needs a blender and oven. 


If you get tandoori chicken around you that you really like, that’s one way to sidestep one part. Just ignore the ‘roasting’ bit and go straight to the curry and onwards.


Get together the ingredients and let’s get started.


One chicken, cut into curry size pieces. Make some deep cuts in the chicken with a sharp knife
1 tbsp oil for the marinade
Curd – half a cup for marinade, half a cup for the curry
Garlic – 6 pods for the marinade (minced), 4 pods chopped fine for the curry
Ginger – 1″ piece for the marinade(minced), 1″ chopped for the curry
Salt – 1/2 a tsp for each but pls adjust as per your taste
Zeera (Cumin) powder – 1tsp for the marinade
Chilly powder – 1 tsp each for the marinade and curry
Turmeric – less than 1/s a tsp, only in the marinade 
Dhania (Coriander)powder – 1 tsp each for the marinade and 1.5 for the curry
Garam masala – 1tsp
3 tbsp oil (I use olive)
3 onions – diced small
3 tomatoes – blanched, peeled and roughly diced
Tomato puree – 2 tbsp
Sugar – 1tsp
Vinegar – 1tsp
Kasuri Methi (Febugreek) – a fistful
2 Green Chillies, whole; slit through the middle.
Oh, oops. Here’s the wonderful thing, I actually don’t use butter. But if you want this richer, then about 50gms of butter can be added to the oil in the curry and about 3tbsp of cream (easy now, Amul has 200gm tetra packs)


STEP 1 :: Marinade and Roast the chicken!


So, get your oil and cup of curd, beat it lightly and blend in all the spices as well as the minced garlic and ginger. Rub this marinade all over your chicken, cover the dish and leave inside your refrigerator for 2 to 3 hours. (Get your chicken out from the fridge at least 30 minutes before you’re going to roast it).


Heat your oven to the max (mine goes to 240ºC), pile your marinaded chicken onto the slotted tray and get this into your oven. Remember, the marinade will drip down to the oven floor…. so if you want to avoid a mess later, do put a large piece of foil on the oven floor.


This needs 12-15 minutes. Do keep an eye on the chicken, since each oven has variable cook times to my mind. But your olfactories and a visual check will surely tell you when it’s done. I tend to do this about 15 mins, which cooks the chicken fully, but I still turn the chicken around and put back in the oven for 3 minutes to brown the undersides.


That’s it. The Tandoori Chicken is ready!
(yes, that’s a copy of Bombay Times to make mopping up easier!)

STEP 2 :: Getting the curry right!


Get hold of the thickest karai (or wok), and heat the 3tbsp oil. If you’re using butter, add at this stage. Once the oil is hot, add the onions, chopped garlic and ginger. After about a couple of minutes add all your dry masalas (chilly powder, dhania powder, garam masala, salt). Once the onions have softened, add the blanched/diced tomatoes as well as the tomato puree. 


Let this onion/tomato mix cook on a medium flame and stir once in a while to keep things centered in your kadai.


You will find the oil will separate in about 10 minutes. At this stage move your onion tomato mix to a food blender (get this into a big jar). Add the rest of the curd and for good measure if you’ve saved up the leftover marinade add that to the jar as well. Pulse your blender a few times and you will get an orange color, thick and consistent paste in your blender jar.


Move all this back to your kadai now and let the blended curry cook on a medium heat for another 10 minutes. This takes care of the rawness of the curd and marinade. Add the slit green chillies, sugar, vinegar and cream (if you’re using) as well. Depending on how I want to adjust the taste, sometime I add a couple of spoons of ketchup too.


Here’s what your dish should be looking like at this time.

To this, depending on the consistency you want, please add water (in small quantities each time so you don’t cause the dish to flood).


Once you’re happy with the taste of this curry, simply take all your tandoori chicken and put into the kadai and gently envelope the chicken with the curry. Remember – the chicken is already cooked – so you’re only finishing off now. You can let this blended chicken cook for another 4-5 minutes.


Here’s your butter chicken at this stage – 

Now, the final flourish – and again actually this is optional. We love kasuri methi in our chicken – so here it is after you throw in the handful! Gorgeous, no?

Blend the fenugreek in gently and let this cook for another 5 minutes after.


That’s it, you’re done!


Add some sliced chilly and/or ginger strips to garnish if you like. A dollop of butter, or some cream atop this dish always adds a bit of glam!


Big Tip! Eat the next day!! My experience, and that of many around me, is that many many meat dishes improve dramatically if eaten the next day! 

The Desi Akurri, and my almost-famous Frozen Margarita

This one is the simplest dish that you are likely to find on my blog.

The original credit for this must go to the January issue of the new Good Food (India) magazine. The issue had a big breakfast section, and it was a godsent! P and I are often at our wits’ end on what to do for breakfast. All manner of eggs have been eaten hundreds of times over already.


(On another day, with camera in kitchen, I will post my Turkish Eggs. A delight to cook and wonderful to eat.)


Back to the Akurri!


Let’s start with the assumption that when you normally do this miss mash (also called and a bhurji) of onions, tomatoes, green chill, coriander and so on, it comes out fine. And you are as bored of it, as you are of your boss’ whiskers. And you’re wondering what could be new about something so mundane; well wait till this goes into your mouth.


It’s the Ginger! Finely dice up a 1″ piece of ginger alongside your diced onion, tomato and green chilly. Throw in all of this into very hot oil in your pan. Add salt, red chilly powder and jeera powder. Just before the vegetables get scalded, pour in the fork-whipped eggs and give everything a good stir around without letting the eggs settle – you do know how to make a bhurji right? Garnish with the coriander! And be generous!


A friend who saw me doing this some weeks ago was amazed at the addition of red chilly and cumin to this dish; I can’t really recall when I started doing that – but when we’re doing desi eggs that seems natural now.


That fragrant ginger combines so perfectly with the other flavors of this dish. 


We like this dish simply because it’s the best you can do with chapatis left off from dinner. Or pao. Or the sinful white bread that so many of us have turned our backs on. Go all the way, scorch the pao in some butter and allow yourself that crisp luxury tomorrow morning at breakfast.


And don’t forget that extra sweet cup of chai!


The Margaritas? Wait for these! They are special! Better than anything that you can get in India’s nightclubs. The only time I had a better one was in O’Hare Airport. 15 years ago!


Just ping me when you have a good bottle of tequila, and you’ve organized some ‘triple sec’ (easily available in most premium stores now – from Angostura), some fresh squeezed lemon juice, salt and loads of ice. A heavy duty blender or kitchen-mixie and (optional) any soft fruit that you like most (strawberry, banana, kiwi, mango – you name it)!


Oh. Buy a few margarita glasses – as below – they’ll come in handy after you’ve fallen in love with these!

 

This wonderful, fall-in-love-with ginger sauce . Mmmm.

Promise to re-publish this with a photo the next time I make this!
Aug 20, 2012 – Updated with the snaps when I made this again today.

Again – this was inspired from Luscious Temptations.
The post is about a Hainanese chicken with Garlic rice – and that looks tempting as hell! But I went there for the ginger and spring onion sauce mentioned at the end! 

ginger – about 4 tbsp grated
spring onions – about 4 tbsp – just the white heads = sliced fine
sliced fresh red chillies – 1 tbsp
sesame oil – 2 tbsp. You can use a normal vegetable oil if you don’t have sesame; but really this sauce makes the sesame oil worth the effort.
salt – to taste

Add all the ingredients in a small shallow bowl, give it a good whisk to mix them up. Then put the bowl into the steamer. Steam away for about 15 mins. When you lift the lid, it should have a light brown texture with the red of the chillies adding a depth of color!

When I made this the last time, I added in some sesame seeds. Like so!

Serve slightly cooled or room temperature with the rice and steamed fish! Keeps well in the fridge for a couple of days as well.

Steamed fish with ginger, spring onions and soy!

It’s fitting that this blog starts here, and today. 
This is one of Payal and my favorite dishes, across choices of cuisine. It’s one of the few dishes with which I don’t completely insist on a carb-accompaniment.


It was made this afternoon at lunch, which is why I felt it necessary to start writing some of these twists down. And yes, it was afternoon & lunch. I was cooking. I happen to be away from work on leave. To relax. And for me much of that happens to be in the kitchen!


Here are some of the links that I have used before as well. You can skip them and move right along if you want.


Luscious Temptations is one kickass blog of someone who is obviously a kickass cook and foodie. I recall when I made this fish the first time, it was by following the recipe here. The addition of sautéed onions was a result of this piece. I had been wondering how steamed onions would be, and this was a great way to add them in. Epicurious generally has the goods, but in this case I decided not to incorporate any of the stuff they said – the pepper and cayenne seemed a bit much for this gentle dish. They speak about adding mushrooms – which I recall I had done in my original attempt.


The fish I like to work with is Basa. 
3 fillets of Basa – about 600gms. (Got a frozen kilo of that at Nature’s Basket for under Rs.500)
The Fish & Atop
Juliennes of ginger (about half a handful)
1 Red Onion – diced and sautéed till brown (or you can grate it & sauté, but the dicing gives it better texture)
Assorted Mushrooms – sliced – couple of handfuls. I used a rehydrated pack of sundry mushrooms; but I can tell you from experience that fresh shiitake are the dreamiest! 
The Sauce (just mix these up in a bowl)
Sesame or peanut oil – 4tbs
Light Soya Sauce – 4tbs (or use less than 3tbs of the normal one)
Rice Wine Vinegar – 2tbs – don’t worry if this is not in the larder… just leave it out.
Water – 2tbs
Fish Sauce – 1tbs – again optional. If you want to give this dish a distinctly thai touch, please use fish sauce, and add in sliced lemongrass and replace the ginger with galangal in the ‘Atop’. Worth a try next time for me too!
The Garnish
2 Spring Onions (sliced diagonal)
2 Fresh Red Chillies (sliced diagonal)


Oh. And you need a steamer! I use my newly acquired bamboo one (crawford mkt). But you can put an elevated plate inside a cooker full of boiling water. Needless to say, the water should not be touching your dish or plate. In my steamer (about 6″) incidentally, I can make no more than 2 long fillet’s; or about 6 pieces 4″x4″ at a time.


That’s it! All set!
Put the fish on a long piece of foil and fold the foil edges inwards a bit (just preventing the juices from flowing away). Make a few slits in the fillet and spoon over some of the sauce into the slits and over the fillet. On top of the fillet, rub some of the sautéed onion, put a liberal amount of julienned ginger and heap the fillet with the mushrooms. Lower the whole foil package into the steamer; and then add a second lot if you have the space. 


If you water is nicely on the boil in the steamer or cooker, then this should take no more than 8-10 minutes of steaming. Lift and check! If the fish is all flaky and white, then you’re done! Garnish with a liberal amount of spring onions and chilles and place into a serving dish. Finally – put some more of the ‘sauce’ on top of the whole dish. I keep making more sauce on the fly since its so simple… so if I find that I need more of this light sauce with my rice, I just make a little more quickly. A couple of times, I have also poured a tsp of sizzling chili oil on top of the whole dish – wonderful – adds a zing. But I avoid this if my girls are eating with us.


Served best with saada steamed rice! And a dash of the sauce if you’ve kept it handy.


My estimate is that this dish (fed 4) cost me no more than Rs.400. And since I eat this so often at Ling’s and Royal China this brings a grin to my face. What your guess? Check Royal China’s prices at Zomato here :). They do a terrific job though; I’d still beat the doors down to eat the same dish there!


Accompaniments!
This ginger & spring onion sauce is a must!
And if parts of your family won’t touch fish, then this quick chicken in hoisin works well.
With pretty much any oriental meal, I will always add a side of greens. This pok choi is typical.
And depending on how much firing up the meal needs, this really really quick chilly sauce!