A LoCal SoCal Butter Chicken

Today, the post will be slightly different. We'll go straight to the point. So, thought I'd start with the image. That should say it all, eh?
     We Bengalis usually don't make chicken with butter so much. We're more of a chicken with potatoes in turmeric and tomatoes curry type of clan. Butter Chicken is primarily a North Indian dish, and most Indian restaurants here carry this as standard staple. Most restaurants also carry butter paneer and really, the flavor profile is nothing to talk about. Just by dunking meat or cheese in cream and butter doesn't make it great. It just makes it heavy and greasy. My theory is that in North India, when it was really cold in the olden Mughal days, eating something with ghee (घी) helped warm people, especially with rotis (रोटी). But here, in the US (and even in India), we're not exposed to cold nights really, it doesn't make sense to eat mounds of chicken drenched in cream. So, my advice when you make this dish--eat less, and enjoy each morsel. I'm sure it'll be difficult to resist but at least you can pretend to try, right?
    So as a twist to the southern California region where I live, I've titled this chicken a "low-cal" one--it's not true. It's made here, so SoCal. But it's low-calorie only compared to what is the 'real' butter chicken.
     I usually don't make Butter Chicken as often as I'd like to eat it primarily because of the butter and cream that's needed to make it really delicious. So I thought of other ways to make it as good, or close enough as guilt-free as possible. This is my version, slightly (only slightly low-fat).

Butter Chicken (hopefully, lower fat)
Ingredients:
8-10 pieces chicken (breasts, and thighs, preferably some with bones)
1 cup yogurt
4 medium tomatoes, diced
2 medium onions, grated
4 tbsp heavy cream
3 tsp garam masala
2 tsp turmeric
3 tsp coriander powder
2 tsp chilli powder
2 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
1/2 tsp cloves, ground
5-6 green cardamom, crushed
3 green chilies, chopped
1/2 inch ginger, grated
5-6 garlic cloves, chopped
3-4 tbsp घी ghee
3-4 tbsp butter
4 tbsp oil for cooking
salt to taste
2 tbsp coriander leaves, chopped for garnish
Recipe

• Add a little oil (1 tsp or so) to the chicken pieces in a glass bowl, followed by grated onions, yogurt, cumin, coriander, turmeric, garam masala, half the cloves/cardamom/cinnamon (3Cs), 1 green chilie, half the garlic and ginger with salt
• Mix well, and marinate the chicken in the refrigerator for about 1-3 hours
• Heat oil in a skillet, and brown/braise each chicken piece so it looks half-cooked (it should brown). Note: if you want the high fat, high calorie recipe, mix in butter with the oil
• Drain excess oil off the chicken
• Use the same pan to cook the rest of the 3Cs, with cumin, coriander, chilies, tomatoes and ginger/garlic
• Once the tomatoes are cooked well, add in the grated onions from the marinade (remove all the liquid by squeezing each handful of onions in) along with 2 tbsp cream and part of the yogurt marinade. Cook for at least 4-5 minutes so the sauce base is thick.
• Add the chicken, and lower flame to medium-low, cover the pan. Cook on a slow fire for 20 minutes or so. Keep checking so the bottom doesn't catch. The chicken is done when the sauce is thick, and the chicken is cooked through.
• Add a dash of ghee and cream at the end
• Garnish with coriander leaves
• Serve hot with white rice or naan bread

It should look somewhat like this, really.

     I hope the dish turns out well when you make it. Try to reduce the amount of cream and butter in this. I guarantee you, it'll still taste good if it's primarily yogurt instead of cream, more oil instead of butter.

     Trust me, and enjoy!

Bengali Chicken Curry with Potatoes

Firstly, the chicken isn’t Bengali. The recipe is, sort of, with my angle to it. You can get chicken from wherever, preferably one without hormones and such. This dish calls for chicken with bones (because they were born with bones and boneless chickens really have a hard time standing up…ah, but you knew that). The dish tastes better with that kind of chicken. The measures are for a dish for 4 people or two extremely hungry teenagers or for one person unwilling to share.
Ingredients:
8-10 pieces, medium size chicken
4 potatoes, small/medium, halved horizontally
4 Roma tomatoes, medium, quartered
1-inch piece ginger, grated
3-4 medium garlic cloves, grated
2 purple onions, medium, grated
2 medium green chilies, sliced thin
Spices:
2 tbsp turmeric
1-2 tbsp red chili (Kashmiri chili) powder (or if you’re scared, half it)
1 tbsp coriander powder
1 tbsp cumin powder
Garam Masala: 4 cloves, 1/2 stick cinnamon (small), 3cardamom, all ground together
2 bayleaf
3-4 tbsp grapeseed oil
Salt to taste
Recipe:
Grate the onions, ginger, garlic into a nice paste. Separate half the onions for sautéing.


Place the chicken in a bowl, and mix in the paste with salt, half the ginger, garlic, cumin, turmeric, and coriander along with the chilies.


Heat the oil in a flat-bottomed pan or a pressure cooker. When the oil is hot, add in the bay leaf with the freshly ground garam masala followed by the rest of the onion, ginger and garlic. Sauté it for 3-4 minutes, and then add the potatoes along with the rest of the turmeric and chili powder.


After the potatoes have softened a bit, add the tomatoes. Cook till the tomatoes are defeated in the fight against you (kidding!). Add some salt to taste. The kitchen should by now smell like a restaurant or else you’ve done something wrong, like set fire to it. Please check.


Finally, add the chicken marinating in the ginger/garlic/onion paste. Sauté it with another tbsp of oil. Once the chicken appears incorporated in the onion/tomato mix, and the potatoes half-cooked, add 1-1 and ½ cups of water, or enough to cover the chicken.


Lower the heat to medium, and cover the lid. Let the chicken cook in its juices and merge with the tomatoes. The turmeric should permeate through the dish. The reason to use Kashmiri chili powder is to get that red/orange color and the heat. But if you can’t find that, regular chili powder will do.


Alternatively, you could use a pressure cooker, sauté in it (the chicken, I mean), and then after the sautéing is complete, add water, put the lid on, wait for about 2-3 whistles, before turning the gas off.


If you want the curry to be less watery, remove the lid, and let the water evaporate a bit, the curry will be thicker. Adjust it based on how you’d like to eat this.


This should take you at the most, 30-40 minutes, because once it’s in the simmer phase, I’d strongly advise you to look for entertainment elsewhere. You could of course, stare at the pressure cooker and jump every time it shrieks, or watch the steam drip off the glass lid if you’re using a pan. That’s up to you, who am I to tell you how to use your time? But anyway, if you’ve made some white basmati rice alongside, then you can eat your chicken with it right after. If you’re a teenager and a very hungry one, you could eat the entire thing yourself. If you’re a polite adult, you may want to share it with someone.


It’s your call. Enjoy!

The Fall Colors of Chicken Curry

I'd like to imagine that Giada de Laurentis absolutely ADORES my curry leaf vermicelli. I'd like to go so far as the fact that the Iron Chef people begged me to join them, but I refused because I'm not that fond of the pale blue color of the chef's jacket. Like I said, those are conversations I really shouldn't share with you on my first blog, should I? Oh, well. You knew it was a lie, come on, didn’t you? I’m not a chef, my chopping skills are rudimentary, and every recipe is a scientific experiment. The only fact that's a fact is that I'm a foodie, and I love everything about it--the cooking, eating, talking (about it) and eating again. I appreciate organic foods, fresh, local produce, new recipes that can be simplified. I love food, whether you cook it or I do.


All of us have our secret recipes. Some of us share them, some are sneaky. If you're a spy, you can figure out family secrets (and recipes) easily. I'm not a spy, and if I were, I'd be very bad at it. So I have a motto. Which is, to share what I know, recipes, that is, and hopefully you'll do the same. My second motto is (who says you can have only one motto?) is: take that recipe, and make it simple. If something takes longer than an hour to make, prepare, monitor, turn, baste etc., you need to question, why? After all, life’s so short and there’s that hang-gliding lesson or that zip-lining trip you’d always wanted to take but never could make the time for? Okay, rule of thumb—if something takes more than an hour to make, as in, stand in front of the dish, stare at it or stir it (you know what I mean), then please, please question why you’re even trying to do this. Now if you like staring at bubbles, or splattering liquids, I’d suggest a spa or a volcano trip, but if you absolutely want to stand in front of your stove with a ladle and simmering liquid, be my guest. You can stir my soups too if you want (that didn’t come out right, did it?).


First of all, why Desi Twist? Desi, being that I’m Indian, desi meaning ‘from the country’, the country being India, and that’s cuisine most familiar. So if I present an Indianized apple pie recipe sometime later, please don’t be mad. I already said I love food, so bear with me, will you? Anyway, twisted, because I think every recipe can be modified, every recipe needs a shortcut and sometimes those twists in the original recipes can be great and good surprises. It’s what I look for when I eat out or steal my friends’ recipes. That’s what Desi Twist’s about—food made easy. Not food made inedible, in case you were wondering.


I live in California and still consider Delhi home. It adds a twist to my culinary thinking, especially an Indo-California one. The folks on the east coast tch, tch at our weather—oh, those poor Californians, no weather change, no fall colors, no color, only sunshine and beaches, oh, those poor people. Ah, but you see my fellow foodies, you enjoy your oranges, rusts and reds on trees, I’ll have that in my food, thank you very much. The good part of living in southern California is that you have tons of year-round farmers’ markets, organic food and fruit stands and fresh leafy greens to choose from. And nothing wrong if you want non-organic food, but to tell you the truth, the flavor in organically grown produce is something that cannot be reproduced in a factory setting. Eating local gets you food grown near you, supports the local community, and you end up eating food filled with sunshine, color and health.


Today, being the day of twists, I'm sharing a simplified version of a dish I've grown up with. This'll be one of the few recipes very Indian, more Indian than twisted. It's very Bengali actually—a typical chicken curry with potatoes. Not because I wanted to start with an authentic Indian dish, but because the dish exhibits all the fall colors—the yellows, ochres and rusts. This is comfort food, reminds me of home (as in Delhi), the weekend, and Ma cooking chicken for lunch while my sister and I tried our best on getting on each other's nerves. Yes, those days, when the biggest issue in my life was how to make my sister's (life) more miserable than mine. Oh, well. Chicken curry—my version, next post. You can share yours when you have the chance and feel the need to.

Till then, enjoy!