Tag: chicken tikka masala

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Indian meal, part 3

Chicken tikka masala may be an American thing. Ashish is unfamiliar with it but then, he was raised a strict vegetarian, being a Brahmin, and just may never have concerned himself with it in India. I read that tikka means skewer and he has never heard of this either. (and he speaks fluent Hindi, Urdu and his native language Telegu). Masala, but the way, means spice. 

But I decided to make it so I got a recipe off the internet. In general, I do not like to use recipes for various reasons but the main reason is that it doesn’t feel like cooking, it feels like a science experiment, as is often is.

As directed I marinated the chicken in yogurt and spices and then threaded them on to skewers (ick) and then grilled them. Soaking your skewers in water in advance is not a guarantee that the skewers won’t burn up, FYI.

I made a sauce with tomato sauce and cream and yet another elaborate spice blend into which the grilled chicken tikka goes. It was excellent.

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Indian meal, part 1

For my sister Mary Kay’s 60th birthday she asked me to make an Indian meal for her. I don’t know if I realized what that might mean or how it would call come about but I said sure. As it happened her birthday was on last Sunday and she/we invited her family and our mom, siblings, their kids, and my aunt and uncle, my uncle is her godfather (not that this makes any difference, we’d have invited any aunts or uncles if they were alive), to our cottages.

I planned on making biryani, tandoori chicken, chicken tikka masala, a citrus and watermelon salad (salads in general are not Indian), raita and grilled vegetables. I also made a pink lemonade cake (really not Indian) since they are delicious and I have a boatload of pink lemonade powder. And I really cannot get behind any Indian desserts. Ugh. 

Making food in my cottage is hard since I do not have much in the way of counter space. OK, like 2 square feet. And the stove is an apartment sized stove. I don’t use it much since it makes the place hot. It’s a small, old cottage and grilling works well anyway. 

What I did though, was A LOT of prep. I had all my spice mixes ready, measured, and labeled in jars. All my produce and rice measured out. I took the extra bowls (totally not enough), zesters, graters, juicers, and had recipes queued up on my iPad as well as print outs of the recipes in case I couldn’t connect to the internet. Here are my spice mixes, there are 2 for each dish. One for the marinade and another for the sauce, essentially. It was nightmare.