Saturday, December 24, 2011

Murgh Makhani aka Butter Chicken

As they say...when it rains it pours. After a long break trying to get back into the groove and catch up on the posts. Niven - Sorry mate Chopsuey is yet to come. :-)

The very first time I "cooked" butter chicken was in Yercaud. We 3 Mustkeers wanted to experiment cooking butter chicken at THE Nanjam. I must've been in my 7th or 8th class at the most. I think we were inspired at that time by many things...can't recall exactly. But we did want to cook "Butter Chicken". We got a whole chicken but a stick through it, lit up a bon fire and started roasting it with by basting loads and loads of Amul butter.  The result of course was a few days of eating Lomotil. It was only after several years did I get to know that Butter Chicken is a staple Punjabi chicken delight. One of the dishes I normally eat to "test the waters" in any new Indian restaurant. If they get this right, they usually have a good chef in place. For a long time I've always thought this is one of those dishes that is best done by a professional. After a bit of research from a few websites was able to get to something pretty close. It does takes a bit of work, but the outcome was worth every minute spent. A word of caution to those who are calorie conscious - this definitely is not a dish for you.

What goes in:
1) Butter
2) Cream
3) Chicken
4) Tomatoes
5) Tomato paste
6) Onions
7) Red chillies
8) Ginger juliennes
9) Ginger & Garlic paste
10) Garam masala spices (Bay leaf, Cinnamon, Star aniseed, green elaichi (most important), cloves, cumin seeds
11) Coriander powder
12) Kasuri Methi. - Wonder what the magic is in that unassuming dried methi leaves.
13) Honey

The process:

Butter chicken has to be done in 2 phases.

Phase 1
1) Make a paste with the following:
   a) Ginger garlic paste
   b) Red Chilli powder
   c) Coriander powder
   d) Salt
2) Marinate the chicken in the above paste.
3) Heat up a large skillet and melt a generous amount of butter.
4) Saute the spices, chillies and ginger for a few minutes
5) Add onions and saute until translucent.
6) Add the tomatoes and saute until the mixture becomes mushy.
7) Set this mixture aside to cool down.
8) Saute the marinated chicken until they are half cooked.
You should have












9) Blend the tomato-onion mix to a fairly smooth paste.
10) Filter the blended contents using a sieve. This gives the smooth texture of a restaurant style butter chicken gravy. Of course this method can be used for any tomato based gravy.

Phase 2
1) Heat a skillet and melt butter. (Is someone counting calories already?)
2) Sautee the ginger juliennes.
3) Add tomato paste and saute until the oil (er..butter) separates.
4) Add the blended paste and bring to a simmer.
5) Add the cream and bring to a boil.
6) Add a few tea spoons of honey.
7) Add chicken and bring it to a boil.
8) Based on the required thickness of the gravy keep adding water in small quantities.
9) Add the Kasuri Methi leaves and give it a stir.
10) Garnish with coriander leaves and its ready to serve.

A  tip

Instead of doing the chicken thing as mentioned above...a better idea would be to make some tandoori chicken tikka and add it to the gravy.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Aloo Gobhi

Hello,

Finally BIA at the Kitchen after a "short" break. Aloo Gobhi has been on the agenda for quite some time. Everytime we had aloo there was no gobhi and vice versa. As with any "Northi" / Punjabi dish my memories always begin from Bangalore. In this case the Gurudwara Dhaba in Ulsoor. Can't say I came close to it, but definitely worth repeating. Until a very recently our spice rack was quite "South Indian". Thanks to some of my IGT mates I came to know of a few more tricks to make it more authentic. This time it was Amchur powder which gives the zing.

Ingredients:
1) Aloo (Potato) (1 - 1.5 inch cubes)
2) Phool Gobhi (Cauliflower) florets
3) Minced Garlic
4) Cumin seeds
5) Onions
6) Tomato wedges
7) Amchur powder 
8) Asafoetida
9) Turmeric powder
10) Garam masala (optional)
11) Red chilli powder


Method:

1) Heat a skillet with a "generous" portion of oil.
2) Sautee the garlic and cumin seeds for a quick 20 seconds.
3) Add the potatoes , asafoetida,  turmeric  and roast it. This is the part that requires utmost patience. You can try to cheat by having smaller chunks of potato, but then it may not become Aloo Gobhi!! So patience please. Potato has to be roasted until you can easily cut through it with a spoon. A better test....try to eat it and it shouldn't taste raw. :-) (Duh!!)
4) I made a mistake of adding the onions along with the potatoes. As part of the slow roasting process, the onions became almost charred and I had to fish it out. On the positive side, it gave a pretty good flavour to the potato. So if you haven't added the onions already, now is a good time.
5) Add the Cauliflower florets and most of the tomato wedges (2/3rds maybe..).
6) Stir fry this mix for about 10-15 minutes along with amchur powder, red chilli powder and garam masala  (optinal) until the Cauli is cooked. Indication - should be slightly soggy.
7) Add the remaining tomatoes and stir fry for a couple of minutes.
8) Garnish with chopped coriander (Cilantro) and serve with hot Chappatis.

Aloo Gobhi Ready!!