Chicken Tikka Masala Part II

Been fooling around with our Chicken Tikka recipe.

Some things we've tweeked-
Fresh tomatoes instead of canned.  Used Heirloom tomatoes grown in our garden-
1 Cherokee Purple (they really are purple!)
1 Lemon Boy (yellow of course)
1 Green Zebra (green and yellow striped)
1 Roma
2 Cherry

Half a white onion and a fresh hot red pepper grown in the garden

Instead of marinating and broiling the chicken we cooked it in a pan with some cow ghee (its clarified butter) with some garlic, ground cumin, ground turmeric, a cinnamon stick, and couple cardamom seeds.

Used heavy cream for extra deliciousness.

Came out really well.  Chicken was not as moist and tender, but still very tasty.

Here is a crazy cross pollinated yellow and green zucchini from the garden, and some of our colorful tomatoes. Weird!

Cate's First Indian Meal

Gobi Matar and Basmati Rice

She gobbled it up!

Chicken Tikka Masala

This is by far our most favorite dish to make. It takes a little time and prep, but it is well worth it. This recipe is adapted from Food and Wine Magazine by Grace Parisi. 

The night before marinade your chicken for a super tender and juicy chicken. 

In the marinade:

1 c low fat yogurt

2 tsp minced garlic

1 T. ginger

1.5 T. cumin

1.5 T. coriander

1/4 tsp. cardomom

pinch of cayenne

1/4 tsp turmeric

a pinch of salt

two pinches of pepper

Mix your marinade up:

Add the chicken:

We let the chicken marinade either overnight or for at least 5 hours. 

While the rest of the dish is cooking, broil or grill your chicken. We just grilled it for the first time last week and it added a nice smokey flavor to the dish. You may also consider not completely cooking the chicken via the grill or broiler, instead, cook it until it is almost done then allow it to finish cooking inside the masala. This keeps the chicken juicy, tender and enhances its flavor.

On to the rest!

Salt and pepper, to taste

Olive oil

1 large onion

2 tsp. minced garlic

1.5 tsp minced ginger

2 T. garam masala

1/4 tsp hot red chili powder

35 ounce can of diced tomatoes with their juices

heavy pinch of sugar 

1 cup cream

Begin with your mise en place. I like to stick the sugar, salt and pepper in the can with the tomatoes so that I don't have to rush these things. 

Begin by heating your oil up, then saute the garlic, ginger and onion. Cook until the onion turns clear.

 

 

 

 Next, add the garam masala and hot pepper and saute for just a couple minutes. After the garam masala is mixed in and has fully coated the onion, add the the tomatoes with their juices, sugar, salt and pepper and allow this to simmer for 20 minutes.

 

 

After 20 minutes add the chicken. We don't let the chicken cook fully the first time, so that it stays tender and juicy and finishes cooking with the masala. Simmer the chicken in for 10 minutes. 

 

Finally, add the cream and simmer for another 10 minutes. The recipe calls for heavy cream, but since Dan and I end up eating the whole thing in one sitting ourselves we usually opt for light cream so that it's a tad less artery-clogging. It turns out just as delicious, I think.

 

The night we made this batch, we served it with yellow rice. Tasty turmeric makes the rice this pretty yellow color. I hope you enjoy this dish as much as we do!

Simple Yellow Rice (or white)

This is a tasty rice dish.  

To make it into a Simple White Rice, OMIT the turmeric, fresh herbs, and adjwain, and ADD a few green cardamom pods.

basmati rice, 2 cups

ghee, 1 tablespoon (or veg oil to make it vegan)

cinnamon, 1 stick

cloves, 5-10

cumin seed, 1-2 teaspoon

adjwain seed, 1-2 teaspoon

freshly chopped coriander, 1-2 table spoon

freshly chopped mint, 1-2 table spoon

turmeric, 2 teaspoon

water, around 2.5 to 3 cups

Start by rinsing the rice.  Rinse it in cold water a bunch of times until the water is just about clear.

I like to cook this dish in our cast iron pan.  Once it gets up to temp you can back off the heat a lot and it stays the right temperature.

Melt the ghee, add the cumin seed, adjwain seed, cinnamon stick, and cloves (for white rice some cardamoms also).  Fry the mix until the cumin seeds darken a couple shades.

Add the rinsed rice, stir fry it for about 2 to 3 minutes.  This is my favorite part, the aroma of the frying basmati is fabulous, I love it.

After frying the rice add the rest of the ingredients; herbs, turmeric, and water.  Stir it all up, bring to a boil, then back off the heat.  It should be more than a simmer, but not a complete boil.  Cover it, but allow the steam to vent.

Resist the urge to stir it while cooking. Basmati is best left alone.

When it looks like the water is gone, or just to check the status, I like to stick the spoon in the middle and push the rice aside just enough to see the bottom.  If there is still water it will be apparent.  In the cast iron it will take about 25 minutes, more or less.  In the picture below you can see the spoon mark.

All done, serve it up with whatever!!

Gobi Masala

This is a dish that we sorta of made up.  It started out as Gobi Matar (cauliflower and peas), but we modified it to our liking.  We left the spice blend from the recipe alone, but added a couple things.  To the recipe we added onions and chana (chickpeas), and increased the amount of tomato puree.

As for the spice measurements, we use a normal silverware teaspoon or tablespoon (not measuring ones), and are usually heaping a little.

Ingredients

Cauliflower, 1 head.  If it is a particularly large head increase the amount of spice. The amount of spices we are specifying is for a medium head.

Onion, 1

Frozen peas, 2 cups

Chickpeas, 1 cup

Coriander, Fresh, 2 tablespoons chopped

Tomato puree, 1 to 1.5 cups

Water, 1 cup (or more as needed)

Ginger paste, 1 teaspoon

Green chili paste, 1 teaspoon

Olive oil or Ghee, 1-2 teaspoons

Spices

Salt (to taste, maybe like 1 teaspoonish)

Cumin seed, 1 teaspoon

Coriander powder, 2 teaspoons

Turmeric, 1 teaspoon

Chili powder, 1/4 teaspoon

Garam masala, 2 teaspoons

Amchur, 1 teaspoon (if you dont have amchur you can substitute half a lemon juiced)

To start we like to "mise en place." A french phrase which means "everything in place", basically have all the ingredients measured and prepared, so you can dump them in when needed.  Seen below we have our cauliflower cut into florets; the peas, chana, and tomato puree in a bowl; onion chopped, fresh coriander chopped; and 2 seperate bowls of spice, bc they go in at different times.  The coriander powder, turmeric, and chili powder go in first, and the garam masala and amchur go in at the end.

So now onto the cooking part!  We like to cook dishes like this in an kadia, or balti, the indian word for wok.

Start by heating up the oil or ghee, then add the cumin seeds.  Cook them until they darken a couple shades.  Then add the ginger paste, green chili paste, and the chopped onions.  Cook that for a 1 minute or 2 until the onions start to soften a little.

Now add the first spice blend, the coriander, turmeric, and chili powder.  Cook those for a minute or 1. 

Add the cauliflower, peas/chick peas/tomato, and water.  Stir it around a bit to get the cauliflower to coat.  Once every thing is mixed nicely and the cauliflower seems coated add the salt.  Some salt is very important, it really brings out all the flavors of the spice.  

Allow it to cook down for about 15-20 minutes until it reaches the thickness you desire.  Then add the fresh herbs (without the fresh herbs it tastes like something is missing), and the second spice blend of amchur and garam masala.   Let it cook for another 5 minutes or so

Then its done!  Let it cool for a little so it thickens.  Here it is served with a little bit of freshly made raita. Tasty and low calorie, Yum!

So you wanna cook Indian...

First thing you will need is a large quantity of spices.

Head to an Indian grocery, they have big bags of spice, for less money than the little containers at the normal grocery store.

Some spices you should have:

cumin, ground

cumin seeds

coriander, ground.  

coriander seeds, but we have not needed them frequently

paprika

turmeric

red chili powder

ground cardamom (we dont use this one much either)

cardamom pods

cloves

cinnamon stick

black mustard seeds

garam masala

amchoor

hing (asefoetida) 

A special note regarding hing (also known as asefoetida, devils dung, or stinking gum!)

Keep it in an airtight container or else it will infiltrate all your spices, we keep it in a tupperware container.  It has an extremely pungent aroma when uncooked,  to me it smells like burning metal cutting oil--  BUT when heated it has a garlic/onion aroma which is very pleasant!  If you put a little sprinkle into some heated ghee or oil it instantly changes to a very pleasant aroma.

Another 2 important staples we use a lot of is ginger paste and green chili paste.

Oh yeah, and Basmati rice!  Yummmm, we like Tilda brand, but have used others in the past.

Ghee is also nice to have, but you can substitute vegetable or olive oil to keep a lot of the vegetarian dishes vegan.

Introduction

If any of you know us, you know that we love Indian food! Over the past few months we have been experimenting with different recipes and techniques of Indian cooking. With nobody to share all of our hard work with, we decided it might be fun to start a blog to document our explorations in Indian cooking. Join us while we feast!