Hakuna Matata... wait, no... Tikka Masala

For this week's experiment, Joely-Poly, we've got a little temptress we like to call "Chicken Tikka Masala." (If you got that reference, +10 geek points.)

I've been thinking hard about what to make next.  So hard that the weekend passed me by and I found myself in a very busy work week.  I normally get home from work after 6pm which doesn't leave a lot of time for me to whip something up, especially when I'm famished.  So I tossed around a lot of ideas like starting some home made sauerkraut, or repeating the steel cut oats experiment.  Then a friend of mine posted a link to a recipe he'd found for a slow cooker version of Chicken Tikka Masala and suddenly I had a plan!

There's a lot of Indian food that I love and a lot of it I don't.  I would hip check an old lady out of the way to get the last bits of butter chicken and naan at a buffet (Note: this is hyperbole and no old ladies were harmed in the writing of this blog.)  I'm very partial to the yellow creamy vegetable stuff, deep fried vegetables, and a few other dishes.  After that things tend to go rapidly downhill into tolerable-land.  I find most Indian curries to be ok, and I can see why others love them, but they aren't my thing.  Chicken tikka masala falls into that middle ground for me.  The creamier it is and the more like butter chicken the better I like it.  I figured that it would be a really good idea to try to make it for myself and see how much I liked it then.  Plus, since it was a slow cooker version, I could whip it up in the morning, go to work, and it would be done when I got home!

The first step was a trip to World Spice Market at the Pike Place Market.  This is a different store from Market Spice where I went to get all the ingredients for Corned Beef (which just keeps getting more delicious as time passes.)  I needed a specific spice mix called garam masala and Market Spice didn't list it, but World Spice Market did.  They also carried everything else I needed, including a mortar and pestle.  I love getting fresh spices.  It's a couple days later now and my car still smells wonderful just from having them in there for a day.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and grabbed the rest of the things I needed.  Do you know how tough it is to find full fat plain yogurt?  There were several different kinds of low fat or no fat plain yogurts, and a bunch of different full fat flavors other than plain.  Eventually I settled on plain greek yogurt even though I had to buy a big tub of it.

When I got home I went to work on the first part of the recipe, the chicken marinade.  I don't have a huge crock pot so I was making a half recipe which can be a bit annoying when you're dealing with things like "one inch ginger" but I muddled through.  Grating the ginger and garlic made the best smell!  I coated the chicken and put the whole thing in the fridge overnight.

The next morning I started in on the second half.  Blanching the tomatoes was easy and a technique I'll remember.  Because I knew I'd be serving this to my wife who is not fond of anything that has the word "pepper" attached to it, I decided not to use the chilies the recipe called for. The chili powder and black pepper would be plenty for any light-weights.  I also cut out the almonds since they were optional and I thought there was already enough going on in this dish.

The onions I used were particularly pungent and my eyes teared up immediately.  That happened over and over, even after all the other ingredients were mixed together.  I was a bit worried that it might end up dominating the flavor, but it didn't.

I threw it all into the food processor and let it go for 10 minutes or so, checking and scraping as I went.  It didn't change much over the last couple minutes so I called it good, added the tomatoes for a few pulses and tossed the whole shebang into the crock pot along with the marinated chicken.  The marinade was so thick that not adding it wasn't really an option as it was firmly coating the pieces.  Besides I wanted all the creaminess the yogurt could add.  I gave it all a good stir, turned it on high, and left for work.

Fast forward to the evening.  I got home and the house smelled great!  The tikka masala had separated a bit after bubbling all day but a quick stir recombined it.  Our roommate had made some nice dry rice to serve it over and we were ready to go.

I liked it.  I didn't LOVE it, but I liked it.  It wasn't as creamy as I wanted it and there was a bit more of the kind of flavors Indian curry has than I wanted, but overall it was quite tasty.  It smells intoxicating from all teh wonderful spices in it.  The flavors were very complex and layered, which I really did enjoy.  I'd get bits of all the different spice flavors at different points while eating each bite.  It had just enough bite to notice without being "hot," as well.

The others seemed to enjoy it, even my 2 year old who I'd figured would not eat in on appearance alone, but I think the smells got to her.  I think that anyone who really likes strong Indian flavors and especially Indian curries would really love this dish.

This dish does require a bit of time and work to make.  Blanching the tomatoes, chopping onions, peeling and grating ginger and garlic, marinating overnight.  Nothing's really hard, but it is intensive.

As for me, though, next time I try cooking Indian food, it's going to be BUTTER CHICKEN!