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 butterFrom The Looneyspoons Collection
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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment