Chicken Tikka Masala

The kids requested Chicken Tikka Masala for dinner tonight, so who am I to argue. Tikka Masala is our "go to" Indian dish, as it is richly flavored, but not overly spicy, so the kids love it. The recipe we use for this is on page 447 of More Best Recipes (The Editors of Cooks Illustrated, 2009). The New Best Recipe and More Best Recipes are two of our most used cookbooks, containing a wealth of bullet proof recipes on all sorts of classic dishes. Chicken Tikka Masala is a fragrantly spiced dish of chicken in a tomato cream sauce.

But before we get to the CTM, we need to make raita, because you can't have an Indian meal without raita (at least in our house you can't).

Raita prep (Chardonnay optional...)

Raita is the simplest side dish ever, and is especially good when paired with some of the very spicy Indian dishes, as the coolness of the yogurt and cucumber serves as the perfect counterbalance to the heat and spice of the entree. We use the raita recipe from Alford and Duguid's Mangoes and Curry Leaves; Culinary Travels through the Great Subcontinent (Artisan, 2005). This is one of my all-time favorite "travelogue cookbooks", but that is a story for another post.

Suffice it to say, you can make a great raita by simply peeling and dicing a seedless (English) cucumber, adding a sufficient amount of plain yogurt to give a consistency like pictured below, and then adding some salt and chopped cilantro. Make sure it is well chilled. Simple.

Raita

The Tikka Masala begins with dry rubbing the chicken in cumin, coriander, kosher salt and cayenne pepper, and setting it aside for an hour or so to marinate.

When you are ready to cook, a bunch of diced onions go into a pot to soften. After 8-10 minutes, garam masala (a store bought Indian spice blend), tomato paste, fresh grated ginger, garlic and a finely minced jalapeno or two are added.

Onions, spices and tomato paste

After the onion-tomato-spice paste has cooked for a few minutes, crushed tomatoes are added along with some sugar and salt to make a nice fragrant tomato sauce. This simmers for about 15 minutes.

Crushed tomatoes added to spice paste

While the tomato sauce is simmering, the dry rubbed chicken is dredged in a yogurt, garlic, ginger, and oil mixture and then grilled until mostly cooked. It is then set aside to rest while the sauce finishes.

Grilled dry-rubbed and yogurt-coated chicken

After the tomato sauce has simmered for a while, a bunch of heavy cream is added, and the sauce is simmered to bring it to heat.

Tomato sauce with heavy cream added

The cooked chicken (grilled or broiled) is chunked up and added into the sauce. Once everybody is in the pool, simmer for 5 minutes or so just to blend the flavors and make sure everything is nice and hot.

Chicken Tikka Masala

Easy. A little bit fiddly, but not difficult. Flavorful. Pretty inexpensive. A winner all around.

Jacques Pepin's Sweet and Sour Steak Sauce

I have tremendous respect for Jacques Pepin, and have many of his cookbooks. Over the weekend, I made filet mignon (a treat that Grace especially loves - "soft steak" as she calls it). Anytime I make a nice elegant steak like this (as opposed to a dry rubbed Fred Flintstone brontosaurus steak on the grill), there is only one sauce the family wants - Jacques' sweet and sour sauce.

The recipe is a very simple one from Jacques Pepin's Table (KQED Books, 1991, page 289), and is from a recipe called Venison Steaks in Sweet-Sour Sauce. I don't make it with venison, obviously, but it is the perfectly complement to virtually any red meat.

For the indoor (non-grill) version of this, I sear both sides of the steaks in a large skillet, and then put the steaks in a different skillet to finish in the oven (a nice medium rare of course). While the steaks are finishing, a sliced shallot or two are put into the original pan with the drippings, and stirred for half a minute or so. Two tablespoons of red wine vinegar are added to deglaze the pan. This is cooked over high heat until most of the liquid is gone. To this is added a mixture of 1 tablespoon of black current jelly, 1 tablespoon of ketchup, 2 teaspoons soy sauce and 1/4 cup cold water. This is stirred around and brought to a boil (just a minute or two to heat and thicken), then strained into a bowl to remove the solids. Super easy and made entirely from pantry ingredients.

Part of an onion can be substituted for the shallots if necessary, and when we don't have black current jelly (which we usually keep in the fridge just for this), you can use blackberry, blueberry or raspberry instead. All will be a little different in character, but will give the sweet counterpoint to the salty soy and the tangy vinegar.

Make twice as much as listed above. You'll want it...

Beef Saag ("Saag Gosht")

or Beef in a Fragrant Spinach Sauce

It's a Saturday, and I felt like making Indian food, so I decided to try a "saag"; meat in a flavorful green spinach sauce. After perusing the cookbook collection, I settled on the "Saag Gosht" recipe (Beef in Fragrant Spinach Sauce) on page 179 of Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking (William Morrow and Company, 1980). I originally intended to make this with lamb, but I couldn't find a satisfactory piece of lamb shoulder, so I went with beef instead.

The recipe is fairly simple, but as with many Indian recipes, it takes a bunch of spices and cooks for a long time (2.5 hours in the oven, after prep). Not a weekday meal, in other words.

Step 1 is to brown lots of large beef cubes in batches.

Browned beef cubes

While the beef is browning in batches, lots of onions are slowly caramelized. After 25 minutes or so, garlic and fresh grated ginger are added to the browned onions in the pan, followed by cumin, coriander and turmeric. Then comes some diced tomato and 3 chopped jalapeno chilis.

Caramelized onions w/spices, tomatoes and chilis

After the onion mixture has cooked a few minutes more, some yogurt is added for creaminess.

Onion mixture with yogurt added

The onion mixture can be a little chunky, because after it is cooked, it is pureed in a blender. Then it is added into the dutch oven with the beef and more spices. Sahni's recipe called for a tied-up spice packet of cinnamon stick, whole cloves, cardamom  pods and bay leaves. I took the short cut and used ground versions of all but the bay leaves to save time (and I had ground cardamom but not whole...).

Beef with pureed onion mixture and more spices

Lastly, 4 cups of water are added and everything is stirred together before putting a lid on the pot and sticking it in the oven for 2.5 hours.

...add water, then braise for 2.5 hours

To give the saag its trademark green color (and spinach of course), a large amount of spinach is blanched in salted water before being pureed. This spinach paste is added to the pot at the end of the long cooking time, and is put back in the oven for a short time (10 minutes) just to meld the flavors a little.

After adding pureed cooked spinach

The result is a vibrant green richly-flavored dish where the beef just melts in your mouth. The last picture doesn't do the plate justice; the color was much more green, as it should be.

On the plate (color was green, not black...)

We served this with simple steamed white rice and raita (cucumber in yogurt with cilantro). And a nice Chardonnay (just doing our part to aid California wine country in its post-earthquake time of troubles...).

The kids loved it, as can be attested to by their final words at the end of the meal: "can you make Indian food again tomorrow?" I bet I can.