Week 22 – Indian

I was introduced to Indian food by my brother, Brian. One night I was lucky enough to have him cook for me and he made Chicken Tikka Masala. It was delicious and I asked for the recipe. I wasn’t sure I could replicate it. See, Brian is better in the kitchen than I am. He’s very confident and has the ability to just throw things together. I need to follow a recipe and sometimes I don’t even do that accurately. Anyway, Brian gave me Gordon Ramsay’s recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala and I’ve made it quite a few times. I wanted to share that recipe for Indian week, but I also thought I needed to try something new. Naan was the obvious choice. See both recipes and some pictures below:

Here’s the recipe I use for Chicken Tikka Masala. I think Brian uses the YouTube video. Some things to note:

1. You’re supposed to use 1 to 2 fresh chilies. It doesn’t tell you which kind, but I use whatever I have around, most recently 2 large jalapeno peppers.
2. Garam Masala is impossible to find in grocery stores around Mankato, so I made my own using this recipe.
3. 400 grams of chopped tomatoes?? Yeah, I used a 14ish ounce can of diced tomatoes.
4. Dried curry leaves are also something not easily found in Mankato. Instead, I just added some curry powder.

Here’s the end result:

This would look a lot better on top of chicken and a bed of rice. However, rice is one of those things that I have a hard time making, so we went without for this meal, hoping that the naan would turn out instead.

So for those of you that don’t know, naan is basically flatbread. And I learned that it’s super easy to make, although it looks pretty intimidating. This is the recipe I used. The directions weren’t great, so if you try it, you might want to compare it to a few other recipes. A few notes:

1. 150 ml is just over 5 ounces.
2. 300 grams of “strong bread flour” is a little over 2 cups. Also I have no idea what strong flour is…I used regular bread flour.
3. I also have no idea what ghee is, so I used butter.
4. The instructions tell you to leave the sugar, yeast, and warm water in a bowl until it begins to “froth”. I had no idea when that was, but here’s the picture I took when I thought it was frothy…

At this point…you’re thinking there is no way my naan turned out, right? I was thinking the same thing, but we are all wrong. It turned out great!

Here’s the dough after it letting it sit for a couple of hours. You break it into 8 pieces and flatten them out into “teardrop” shape. I didn’t think the shape mattered too much.

Then you literally just cook it on a hot pan. No oil or anything. I think some comments below the recipe I used said you could use a grill too.

So that was my Indian meal: Chicken Tikka Masala and Naan. It was delicious and actually pretty easy. I hope everybody takes an evening to go out of their comfort zone to cook and taste this meal!

Next week Janine will be back with the theme Meals Under $10!