Chicken Tikka Masala

Recipe: Chicken Tikka Masala
Book: Jamie's Dinners

We are great fans of curry in our house yet I use that term quite loosely; we eat a lot of jars of simmer sauce. Mild for the children and slightly fiercer for us grown ups. The lack of spices, other than pepper and perhaps a bit of paprika or cinnamon, in my larder cupboard has always been a mild source of embarrassment to me. It's obvious that I've never had the pleasure of heating, grinding and pounding my own spice mix so I determined to rectify this.

The most obvious place to start was with an old, old favourite of ours and indeed most of the western world it seems:- Chicken Tikka Masala. I've been itching to cook one the recipes in Jamie's Dinners and so this is where I started. Alongside the regular things, into my shopping trolley today sat such exotic ingredients as ground cumin, mustard seeds and garam masala. Had I had to identify any of these ingredients by taste alone, I don't think that I could have done it.

So, the recipe is easy to follow and despite there being a number of steps, it's a slow process so the panic factor is minimal. The kitchen smelt wonderful as the onions and spice mix started to cook. The marinating chicken gave me an inordinate amount of visual satisfaction and I kept having a little stir as my sauce cooked, imagining the flavour infusing into the meat. The cooking of the meat would have been easier had I had a griddle pan; I had to grill it which was slightly messy and I suppose a bit less charred than would have been nice. The texture of the sauce after the cream was added was pleasing and it looked like far more work has gone into it all than was actually the case.

Verdict from the Children? They had a small taste and decided that it was too spicy although I will be trying them again with this because it's not spicy really, it just has the barest hint of underlying heat.

Verdict from the Grown Ups? Delicious! I am tasting a flavour an hour after eating that I can't yet identify and I'm not sure if I like it. However, it was very pleasurable to eat and it's nice not to have the synthetic aftertaste that I usually have from the jars of sauce.

How Easy Was It? It is somewhat labour intensive and there are very specific ingredient quantities which I think is important because the balance of spices must be maintained. It's not a difficult recipe though and only basic skills are required.

Will I Make It Again? My husband will probably encourage me to do so and I would be willing. I think that I'd like to make another version to compare because I'm not convinced that this is a definitive Chicken Tikka Masala.