using a recipe as used in Moti Mahal, the iconic restaurant in Delhi India, where the first butter chicken was cooked by Kundan Lal Gujral who moved to Delhi India during partition in 1947 from Peshawar Pakistan. In Peshawar, Kundan Gujral happened to take over a sweet shop called Mukhey ka Dhaba from an elderly gentleman called Mokha Singh and named it Moti Mahal. It was here that tandoori chicken was invented. As the tandoori chicken hanging on skewers next to the tandoor, awaiting customers and their orders had a tendency to start drying out, the ever enterprising and inventive young Kundan decided to cook a spiced fragrant spiced sauce with tomatoes, butter and cream in which pieces of tandoori chicken were immersed, helping them regain moisture, creating a moist flavourful chicken delicacy! And that is how the world famous Butter Chicken was born! Moving to India Kundan Gujral opens a small kiosk called Moti Mahal in the busy district of Daryagunj in Delhi. 70 years later a chain of Moti Mahal restaurants are run far and wide by his grandson Monish Gujral serving the signature dish The Moti Mahal Butter Chicken.
Old Delhi Butter chicken-the chicken is marinated with a mix of paprika and cayenne pepper, turmeric, saffron, lime, ginger, garlic and a Punjabi garam masala. Cooked in a tomato and butter sauce flavoured with cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, fenugreek and cumin finished with cream
My wife loves butter chicken as do I when it’s done properly. I make a large batch of tandoori chicken first (how else can you make it !), marinated for at least 48 hours and then we have it as kebabs with roti, raita and salad. The rest is made into a butter chicken or/and sometimes a balti. Living in France has forced me to make my own curries as there is nothing around here. I’m not half bad at it now.
Same. Well, I don’t make them - I’m so bad at cooking I can burn a salad… But my other half does. It helps that one of her best friends back in blighty, who is Indian, lived with her for a while and taught her how to cook proper Indian food
About 5 years ago a friend got married in Kerala, and we first met her family in Goa, then travelled by train with them for the wedding. Our last night in Kerala, my wife saw butter chicken on the menu, and wanting something not too hot, chose that.
It was REALLY hot.
I can enjoy a hottish curry, but this was nuts.
It looked like butter chicken, and smelled like it, bar the scent of chilli, but just crazy hot. In general, we found Kerala food hotter than Goan food.
Hi Lily
I’ve noticed it very much depends who is in the kitchen and who they are cooking for at times when you are in Indian restaurant kitchens and more so in places that cook for tourists and in general in the British Indian Restaurant genre e.g. in the UK. There it’s about asking for korma, mild, medium, not too hot, spicy, blow my head off and all that kind of talk which is so different to the cooking in I dian homes.
Cooking in the southern parts of India is generally with more dried red chillies, fresh green chillies and chilli powder than what you would find in North India for example.
When I cook for fridaynighttakeaway it’s the original recipe or a lite version which uses piment doux instead of the usual deggi chilli. So our clients have a choice.
They us sometime. Fridaynighttakeaway.com
For a fantastic curry try the Dishroom ruby chicken curry, you can find it on line. I make it with vegetables or paneer as I’m a vegetarian it’s easy to adapt. And if it seems a bit rich, you can use reduced fat creme fraiche and butter substitute .
I’ve given up going out for a curry in France, they just don’t seem to get it right. I had the chapati I ordered with my main dish turn up as a starter!!! I mean, don’t the staff eat Indian food?
I am (i feel at least) incredibly lucky that my Indian grandmother taught both my parents how to cook great authentic Indian food from various regions due to her and my (British) grandfather having to spend time in different regions with him being in the army on attachment there. She passed away when I was 4 so I barely remember her sadly and have just a couple of photos of us together but if nothing else her memory and spirit will live on when I get all the pans in the kitchen out and make a horrific mess creating something from her teachings and recipes.
I’ve been using Annachi.fr , it’s an online Indian supermarket, lots of choice, I can easily get things not available locally, like paneer, tamarind, mustard seeds. Thinking about it, there’s not much available local to me.
Sad to say we do not have this choice in Valence, DrĂ´me. The Indian restaurants here, cater to European taste. So an Anglo Indian like myself who is used eating medium hot curries am hard done by. One restaurant owner was put out when I asked for chili!
I tried to order from annachi online and when I got to the checkout and was asked to enter my location for delivery, I was told that home delivery could not be made as I lived in a remote mountainous area ! We don’t of course and I tried to talk to them about correcting this, but they said it was their delivery agent that made the decision. They didn’t seem interested in trying to get this corrected so they never got my business. I found a few good small indian supermarkets in Toulouse after that, so I go twice a year to stock up on the spices I can’t get locally.
Having eaten dishes marked as “spicy” and “hot” in French restaurants and found them less spicy than anything KFC sells, I have drawn the conclusion that 99% of French folks dislike hot and spicy food.
French “Tex-Mex” in particular would have both Texans and Mexicans shaking their heads in disbelief.
You are not wrong! I was checking out the special offers and came across Vibuthi at €1.05 for 50 grams. Always keen to try new stuff I looked up what it was on Wikipedia.
“vibhuti , is sacred ash made of burnt dried wood, burnt cow dung and/or cremated bodies used in Agamic rituals”
French friends in the village invited us and 4 other neighbours for aperos that turned into supper . She apologised that the ratatouille was too hot as she’d pug in too many peppers!! No, it wasn’t hot at all. Do I dare cook a curry for them, toning down the heat as I did when our children were small , a!l the flavour spices but little chilli or cayenne.
All aperos with this group now stretch over 4 or 5 hours!
Curry is not something I eat but no way would I ever offer it to french people, only those that have travelled and are adventurous in their eating habits who have usually been Parisennes and not locals. Curry was not the done thing to offer anyone in Brittany and chillis would not be acceptable either unless they have travelled and know them.
