Not Delia

Butter Chicken – Photo Essay

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by

Not Delia
in ,

OK, I’ve given you the ingredients and the method. Here are the photos of my attempt:


 
Ingredients for butter chicken assembled in two aluminium traysFirst I assemble all the ingredients. There’s rather a lot because the marinade is fairly complex.


 
Chicken pieces on a red chopping-board for raw meat; marinade ingredients on a green chopping-board for vegetablesNext I prepare the chicken and the ingredients for the marinade.


 
Chicken pieces in a bowl with marinade, being stirred with a wooden spoonChicken is mixed in with the marinade ingredients.


 

Marinated chicken pieces frying in a frying-pan on a cooker, while tomatoes cook in butter in a sauté panHere’s the chicken pieces cooking and the tomatoes slowly melting to a pulp. I’ve also got the kachumber ingredients ready. There are cachumber [sic] recipes in this book but I prefer to do it my own way.


 
Fried marinated chicken pieces being further cooked in a tomato and butter mixture in a frying panNow I’ve added the tomato mixture to the chicken in the frying pan.


 
Completed butter chicken in a copper and steel serving dish of traditional Indian design
The finished dish. I threw on a bit of chopped coriander to make it look more attractive.

Well, it wasn’t Gourmet Express (Ainsley does a version of chicken tikka masala in minutes in that book – very nice too) but the quality and complexity of flavour of this butter chicken was a bit of a step up from that, so, yes, it was worth the effort. It’s a good book, but not one of my top ten. I’m still keeping my eyes peeled for a better one.

PS: One of these days I’ll show you how to make an Indian restaurant curry. It’s not for the faint-hearted as it takes hours of preparation. Worth it, though.

50 Great Curries of India

Buy from Amazon UK
Buy from Amazon US

Camellia Panjabi
Paperback, 192 pages
1995, Kyle Cathie Limited
ISBN 1 85626 186 7
RRP: £9.99

Read my review of 50 Great Curries of India

 

Comments

2 responses to “Butter Chicken – Photo Essay”

  1. Mike K-H

    Tell me: is your kitchen always this clean, or was it set up for the photos?

    (Not for nothing did I choose the ‘Man in Greasy Shirt’ pseudonym…)

  2. Not Delia

    LOL! I confess to tidying it up a bit for the photos. That said, I like things to be done professionally. I always use the correct board and knife for the job at hand. The kitchen is tiny, sometimes I wish that when we had renovated this house we’d lost a bedroom and bathroom (we have three of each) in favour of creating a larger kitchen. But you don’t really need a big kitchen to do good cooking, as long as what space you do have is well organised.

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