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Friday, April 5, 2013

Namaste

So.
I love trying new foods, to a point.  I haven't always been like that (frankly, I'm sure my mother is sitting in front of her computer laughing hysterically).  Growing up, I was a picky eater.  I preferred if no foods were touching each other on my plate (still do), and was skeptical of many things my mother made.
While I would say that I'm a lot more adventurous now, I still won't eat mushrooms and am skeptical of sandwiches that I didn't watch being made.
But world foods:  I'll give lots of them a shot.  I love Mexican.  I'm a fan of Chinese food (but not too often).  I adore French food - both cooking and eating.  Greek is yummy, but not something that I've spent much time replicating at home.  I also enjoy Indian.
Indian, in fact, is the one way that I like cauliflower: curried.  And daal.  And tandoori chicken.  And curry chicken.  And naan.  But my favourite is Butter Chicken.  I love the spices in the sauce, but I've never tried to recreate any of those flavours in my own kitchen.  Until now.
I'm lucky in that J is game for anything.  He doesn't like turkey and is trying to learn to like fruit, but he'll give whatever I cook a try.  When I announced that I was making this, he wasn't too sure until I started cooking.  Just the onions and spices made him interested enough to come into the kitchen to find out what I was up to.  He also enjoyed the results.
I present to you now The Looneyspoons Collection's Better Butter Chicken:


Ingredients:
2 Tbsp butter
2 large onions, roughly chopped
2 tsp minced garlic
1 Tbsp minced gingerroot
1-1/2 tsp chili powder
3/4 tsp each ground coriander and ground tumeric
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon and ground cumin
28 oz can of diced tomatoes, drained
1-1/2 c chicken broth
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp each salt and pepper
1 whole rotisserie chicken, skin removed and meat cut into pieces
1/3 c sour cream

Method:
1.  Melt Butter in a deep skillet.  Add garlic and onions and cook slowly until onion is soft.  Stir in ginger, chili powder, coriander, tumeric, cinnamon and cumin.  Let flavours meld, about 1 minute.  Add tomatoes, broth, brown sugar, salt and pepper.  Cover and simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
2.  Add chicken and sour cream and simmer uncovered 5 additional minutes.  Serve hot over cooked rice.
From The Looneyspoons Collection

Here's the onions and the spices.  It smelled so good.  The cinnamon was standing out with the ginger, but oh, so good.  J showed up as this cooked in the pan, wondering what I was doing. 
Do you like my new wooden spoon?  In the great apartment clean out for J's dad I acquired it.  It's big and fantastic.
The sauce simmered as I cooked the rice.  While there is a long list of ingredients, it goes together rather quickly.  I think the thing that took the longest was skinning the chicken and getting the meat off the bones.
J and I both enjoyed this, and it made enough for at least another meal if not a lunch for one of us as well.  That's a win win in my book.


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