Conwoocious Cook...

I had the oddest desire to make Chicken Tikka Masala after having Indian takeout a couple of weeks ago, so I went online and typed "Idiot-Proof Chicken Masala" to see what would pop up. I perused, and rejected, several recipes that required marinating the chicken (I said idiot-proof, dammit). I finally ended up trying this recipe for "Murgh Tikka Masala", since it seemed the easiest. See: http://www.whats4eats.com/poultry/murgh-tikka-masala-recipe

Yeah, it's not traditional, but it seemed pretty straightforward. The recipe made a HUGE pot, about 6 times the amount I ordered from the takeout place. (I measured this by actually storing my tikka masala in identical plastic containers that the takeout comes in...yeah I do takeout a lot and I hoard those containers like they were gold -- or chocolate-dipped bacon.)

But anyway...to the cooking. It's not a super easy recipe, since there are lots of things to prep (chopping onion, chopping tomato, cutting chicken - icky slimy yuck), but a food processor helped greatly. Not so much with the chicken, but with the other stuff, heck yeah.

I pretty much kept to the recipe, though I did add a cup of food-processed spinach in an attempt to add more veg to my diet, and the fresh tomatoes I used looked a little anemic -- they tasted fine, but they weren't super red. I kept tasting the dish during the simmering process (after the chicken was fully cooked, of course -- I ain't a complete cooking dunce!), and it just lacked punch...you should have seen me maniacally shaking the different spices and seasoning into the pot in an attempt to give it some pep.

After I added the yogurt at the end, it was still lacking something...the buttery, creaminess that the takeout had. Ooops. I used nonfat yogurt...and not a drop of cream . I was so desperate, I was ready to drop in a hunk of buttah. But as I was trying to figure out how much to add (Whole stick! Half a stick! Whole! Half!), the dish just kind of came together. Like magic.

The dish tasted way different than the takeout (hell, it looks waaaaay different...and way different from the pic in the recipe, too!). It was much less creamy, and more tangy, but it tasted right. While I was having my internal butter debate, the flavors melded and compromised. I quite enjoyed the dish, both with naan, and over rice, and for the cost of the chicken and some spices (I had to pick up turmeric and garam masala) I ended up with a pretty decent dish that lasted quite a few meals. And like takeout, this tikka masala actually tasted better the next day...and the day after...So the moral of this story is: Wait a bit, let things stew, and things may come together just right in the end.

Here's a pic of one of my containers of tikka masala. It kinda looks like it could be takeout, yeah? Sad, but my culinary goal is to make food that looks like takeout.