2010 Cooking club Week 34: Murgh Makhani (Butter Chicken Curry).

Seaneh

It was my birthday last thursday and to celebrate I cooked for 14 friends at my house. Was fun, they brought drinks and cakes and hugs and all that good stuff and I supplied to food.
I decided that because it was cooking for a larger than normal amount of people I'd do a curry because it's as easy to do it for 15 as it is for one!
I used the following recipe. I really enjoy it.

Right for enough to feed 4/5 people you will need the following.


Ingredients
12 Ripe medium sized tomatoes (plum are best for colour, but it's not massively important)
6/7 cardamom pods*
3/4 blades of mace*
4 cloves of garlic (roughly chopped)
Thumb sized piece of root ginger (julienne)
3/4 Green Chili's (deseeded and julienne)
5 Chicken Breasts (chopped into bite sized pieces).
1 teaspoon of Green cardamom powder*
3 teaspoon of Red Chili powder*
some Kasoori Methi (dried fenugreek leaves).*
1 500ml tub of natural yogurt
Tandoori Masala powder*
Butter... About a 3 tablespoons (no, seriously).
3 teaspoons of honey.


Instructions!

Step 1.

Pour two thirds of the yogurt into a mixing bowl and all the a couple of heaped teaspoons of Tandoori Masala and mix until it's smooth. Add the chopped chicken pieces and mix through. It will look like this.




Now Put that in the fridge to marinate. Ideally you'd leave it for a few hours, over night would be even better.




Step 2.

Get your tomatoes and cut them into quarters lengthwise and then chop then roughly.
They should look something like this.



Now put them aside for the time being.



Step 3.

Melt about half the butter in a saucepan and when it is fizzing and buddling throw in your garlic, ginger, chilis, mace, cardamom pods and let them cook away at a medium heat for about 2 minutes,

They will look like this





Now add the chopped tomatoes and cook them on a medium heat for about 25 minutes or until the tomatoes had completely cooked down to a pulpy sauce.

While that is cooking. Get your chicken from the fridge and put it into a roasting dish and cook in a preheated oven at 180c for about 25-30 minutes, stirring after 15 minutes.

the chicken will look like this, don't worry about the blackened bits, that's just the yogurt a little burned, it's all good.



When the chicken is cooked, get a hand blender and blitz the absolute bejaysus out of tomatoes and spices then pour the whole lot through a sieve into a clean pot/bowl and throw away the tomato skins, ginger fibers, cardamom pod etc which are left in the sieve.

The sauce which comes out the other side. will look like this.




Step 4.

In a clean pot, melt the rest of your butter and then add your sieves tomato sauce. Bring back to the boil and cook for about 5 minutes to make the tomato sauce a little less tart. Then reduce the heat to low and add the teaspoon of green cardamom powder, the chili powder and the rest of the yogurt. Then add your chicken (which you have broken up again, as it tends to stick together when cooked in the yogurt) and let the sauce cook away for another few minutes to let the flavours of the chicken and tadoori masala combine with the tomato sauce, then add the honey.
Now, add your kasorri Mehti and let it cook for another 2 minutes and you are ready to serve!

I usually just have mine with some Basmati rice or nan bread.

It will look something like this.



I hope this post hasn't been extremely hard to read. I also apologise for the picture quality, couldn't find my digital camera so had to use my phone.



*Anything with the * at the end can be got in any Indian store. Some of it you might be able to get in Tesco/Superquinn.


Protip:
When buying your tomatoes, go to your local fruit and veg market and ask them if they have any over ripe/bruised/etc tomatoes and you will take them off their hands for cheap. I got over 3kg of vine tomatoes for €3, I made enough sauce for about 20 people (fed 15 and have about 5 portions in the freezer) and still had about 15 tomatoes left over which were actually in pretty good condition.

Use the ones in worst nick in the sauce and keep the firmer/undamaged ones for eating in sambos/salads etc. Save yourself a small fortune.

Seaneh

Thanks to GStormcrow for the resizing advice!

Thumpette

God that sounds so amazing! Looks yum too! Damn diet!

Kenny_D

Seaneh wrote: »

Erm, how do I make the images smaller?

If a mod wants to jump in there and sort that out, I'd be very grateful.

Looks great Seaneh. You can download a free program called irfanview. Once installed open the image up with irfanview and press Ctrl+R to resize the image. 800x600 should be good for the forum. Then just save and upload the smaller pics.

Alternatively use imageshack.us to upload the images and it gives you the option to resize before you upload them. It will resize them automatically and give you links to the smaller images

BaZmO*

Looks great, can't wait to try it. Although you need to sort out the pics.......they're huuuuuuuge!!

foodaholic

quick question, is that green or black cardamom pods you used? I have everything bar the marsala powder, so shall be doing this soon.

I love cooking club

Seaneh

foodaholic wrote: »

quick question, is that green or black cardamom pods you used? I have everything bar the marsala powder, so shall be doing this soon.

I love cooking club

Green cardamom pods and green cardamom powder.

The Masala powder is around €1.25 for a 100g bag in most indian food shops, just so you have an idea how much it's gonna cost.

The Black Oil

Excellent, thanks for sharing it.
I've had cardamom pods for a while, but not had the chance to use them. Will keep an eye out for the other ingredients: Masala powder, Kasoori Methi, etc as I'd need to track them down.

dimple_smile

BaZmO* wrote: »

Looks great, can't wait to try it.

Neither can i

CJhaughey

Looks great, I am going to do this with Rabbit.
Thanks!

JohnK

Sweet jebus that looks tasty :cool:

Little Alex

We followed your advice, Seaneh, and got the marinade on the go last night.

And tonight we made it:



Thanks for the lovely recipe!

_feedback_

Looks great!

For some reason I found this very funny!

Seaneh wrote: »

get a hand blender and blitz the absolute bejaysus out of tomatoes

Not the usual wording you'd see in a recipe

Dinkie

I managed to find all the spices in my local health food shop....


Just a quick question. I have the chicken marinading in the fridge at the moment. I know already however that I have made too much. Can it be frozen? I'm out for dinner tomorrow and then on holidays so won't have a chance to eat it.

(Will post up pics when it is done).



Thanks

Seaneh

Ah yeah, it all freezes up perfectly. It's actually a great dish to cook ahead.

I'd let it defrost completely in the fridge and then bring it to a slow simmer in a pot for a few minutes rather than nuke it but nuking it is grand too.

Dinkie

It turned out really, really nice... Thanks Seaneh.

Served it with dahl, poppadums and naan as neither of us are big rice people.



Will be making this again, but it took a lot longer (and a lot more dishes) to make then I thought so it will only be done for special occasions!

BaZmO*

Those Poppadums, were they pre made or are they they type you make yourself?

I remember you used to be able to get ones that you make yourself in the supermarket. They were little discs that you rubbed with oil and then stuck them in the microwave and they cooked and rose to the normal size.

Anybody know where I could get them?

Dinkie

I bought them and then shallow fried them (although I think you can put them in the toaster also). Just keep an eye on them in the toaster as they tend to burn quickly.

I bought mine in the asian market opposite jervis st., but think I've seen them in tescos.

foodaholic

I made this tonight, went down a treat. OH loved the sauce said it was better than any takeaway so thanks Seaneh

Malari

We had this last night and it lived up to expectations! I like butter chicken when I go to an Indian restaurant so was hoping I'd be able to make a passable imitation at home, and it was delicious!

I managed to track down the fenugreek leaves and cardamom powder, and substituted a little ground nutmeg for mace.

Actually I was a bit haphazard with the old measurements, as I don't like very chilli-hot dishes, and I had about 3 chicken breasts, so wasn't measuring exactly. Maybe more yoghurt would have been good. I thought I had a big tub in the fridge, but my boyfriend has just discovered that granola is lovely and not just "hippy gravel stuff" and that it goes very well with yoghurt...

Anyway, it's going on my "regulars" list of recipes - thanks!

Mr Magnolia

I had a lot of the ingredients for this dish, the only thing I didn't have was cardamom powder and when I couldn't find any anywhere I ground some green cardamom seeds. Unfortunately they over-powered the dish slightly, must be a lot stronger than the stuff you buy so I'm on the hunt so I can try this properly. I had photos but damned if I can find them, if get them I'll edit them in.

Curry Addict

Mr Magnolia wrote: »

I had a lot of the ingredients for this dish, the only thing I didn't have was cardamom powder and when I couldn't find any anywhere I ground some green cardamom seeds. Unfortunately they over-powered the dish slightly, must be a lot stronger than the stuff you buy so I'm on the hunt so I can try this properly. I had photos but damned if I can find them, if get them I'll edit them in.

imho the problem was not the cardamom seeds being overpowering compared to ground cardamom. the cardamom needs to be balanced with the mace in equal amounts. for the quantaties in this recipe 4tsp of each should be good.
grinding your own mace and cardamom gives best results.

Seaneh

I ended up making this with pasata instead of whole tomatoes during the week and the difference in colour and taste was insane, much more intense red colour and much motr flavour. I'd imagine it's down to the fact that most tomatoes here are pretty average but it was a noticible difference.

just thought I'd share.

HoPpiE

just wondering how much pasata did you use in the recipe?

boosh_fan

this is cooking now!!! Don't have cardamom powder or fenugreek leaves so I hope it's ok without them.

edit: it was totally yum!!! Next time I might make some of olaola's flatbreads to go along with it.

xxdilemmaxx

Made this last night for a dinner party I am having tonight, it tastes amazing but unfortunately the yoghurt has split so it looks a little lumpy

Any ideas on how to rescue it?

GalwayGuy2

Hmmmm, is mace another name for nutmeg?

oscarBravo

GalwayGuy2 wrote: »

Hmmmm, is mace another name for nutmeg?

No, different parts of the same plant. Nutmegs have the kernel (which you grate, to get ground nutmeg) inside a shell (a bit like a pistachio without the neat split) which is wrapped in a membrane called the mace.



The part labeled "seed" is the shell I was talking about, with the kernel inside it.

GalwayGuy2

Can i use nutmeg?

oscarBravo

Probably. It will be different, but close enough.

Roald Dahl

We had this lovely recipe a few nights ago, but made with paneer instead of chicken, and with passata instead of fresh tomatoes, like Seaneh's suggestion.

The sauce is fantastic and very much like a good restaurant dish!