I had a really good “I don’t want anything I have around, and don’t want to go to the store” off-the-cuff cooking experience earlier tonight, for a dish roughly like Chicken Tikka Masala that I’ll be calling Chicken Tikka Whatever I have in the Kitchen.
“Chicken Tikka Masala” is apparently literally “Small cooked pieces of chicken in spice sauce,” (and is not actually Indian in origin) and there is an oft-quoted (but rather difficult to actually obtain) survey from “The Real Curry Restaurant Guide” in 1998 that found from 48 restaurant recipes for chicken tikka masala, the lone mutual ingredient was… chicken. I would just call it that, but I tend to think of something a little smoother and creamier, like what Kashmir served before it was replaced by Punjab II and their suck.
For a change from my usual habit of not including recipes in my food posts (because there aren’t any to give), I tried to write down what I did for this one:
All measurements totally eyeballed offhand, and really based on rough ratios, not volumes. The volumes on the ginger are especially sketchy because it was grated frozen, so the listed values are less than fluffy frozen grated, and more than paste. Use this as a rough technique idea, not something to be followed in detail.
Ingredients:
2-ish boneless/skinless chicken breasts
1 medium onion
1/2 can crushed tomato
1/2 cup milk
1-2tsp arrowroot powder (thickener, use whichever you prefer)
Spices:
Ground Coriander
Garam Masala (prepared powder)
Garlic (bottled, chopped)
Grated fresh ginger
Cardamom pods
Tsien tsen (or similar) chili (dried)
Paprika
Prep:
Chop chicken into small cubes, loosely dice onion, finely grate enough ginger to supply the below. Crush 2 of the cardamom pods and one hot pepper.
Cooking:
In pan 1 (heavy pan): mix 1-2tsb garam masala, one crushed pepper, 1-2 crushed cardamom pods, 1tsp coriander, 2-3 Tbsp garlic, 1-2 Tbsp grated ginger with 1-3 Tbsp oil (enough to wet everything)
In pan 2 (wok/deep pan): mix 1-2tsp garam masala, 3-4 whole cardamom pods, 1-2tsp coriander, 1-2tsp paprika, 2-3 Tbsp garlic, 2 Tbsp ginger with 1-3 Tbsp oil (enough to wet everything)
Turn pan 1 on med-high heat, pan 2 on med; heat until spices are extracting into oil (just prior/beginning to smoke)
Douse chicken with 2tbsp lemon juice, add to pan 1. Add onion to pan 2.
Cook chicken until ready to eat, and reserve. Ideally it should pick up some smoky flavor from the spices overheating at the beginning and after running dry at the end, but mostly cook moist. Add a little liquid to make it happen if needed.
Cook Onion until soft, add crushed tomato, cook covered until texture starts to disappear.
While the cooking is going on, mix 1-2tsp of arrowroot and 1/2 cup of milk in a little container and shake until mixed.
Add the prepared chicken to the sauce, and stir until mixed. Add milk+arrowroot mixture, then reduce heat and stir while the thickener sets. Serve over basmati rice.
Watch for cardamom pods while devouring, they will ruin a bite if you demolish one at an inopportune time.
There are a couple of tweaks that already occur to me; For the sauce, if I weren’t too lazy to do it, pulling out the cardamom and running the mixture through a food processor/blender after cooking but before adding the chicken would probably make a better texture. Using cream (which I don’t keep on hand) instead of whole milk (which I do) would also improve the sauce. For the chicken, coating it in yogurt (and possibly some of the dry spices, or a little premixed tandoori spice) along with the lemon juice before cooking would improve it in almost every way, but again, I don’t always have plain yogurt on hand.
Those avenues for improvement aside, it was surprisingly delicious for a first pass recipe, and despite it having more tomato than I should really eat in it, I’ll probably play with it again.
