Butter Chicken Fail?

I have realized that Indian Butter Chicken needs an awful lot of cumin.Then again, I don't ever really use cumin, and I wasn't supposed to use it in the first place >.<

Anyways, I decided on a whim this morning that for lunch the family would have some deliciously cultural Butter Chicken. The only other time I have eaten butter chicken was when my sister was in grade 9 and brought it home from her foods class with a piece of naan bread soaking in it. It was delicious though! Before I ever saw it, I thought it was a whole chicken thoroughly soaked in melted butter and roasted before being fried in a large vat of boiling butter. Now I know that 1: Butter burns like heck so you can't fry anything with pure butter and 2: Butter Chicken is like bite sized chicken in this spiced cream/milk and tomato sauce.

I subscribed to that allrecipes newsletter thing and because I rarely check my email, about once a month I have to go through it and check about 180 messenges or so from allrecipes :( The good thing is, I found that SUPER easy butter chicken recipe! It calls for cream, garam masala and tandoori masala, which I had absolutely none of, but that was ok. Here's my altered version, but I'll post the original at the bottom of my post. This makes enough for 2-4, depending on how much you eat.

This is the substitute for the garam masala. Mix all the ingredients together ahead of time in a custard cup-super easy! It makes approx. the amount needed for this recipe.

1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp paprika
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp crumbled bay leaves
1/16 tsp ground clove

 For the tandoori, just use a guideline of 75% cumin and 25% paprika. Now you're set to go!

Butter Chicken Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil or butter

3 1/2 tablespoons flour

2 cups of regular milk

1/4 cup butter

1 cup of tomato sauce

3/4 tsp garam masala

salt to taste

cayenne pepper (optional-I left it out)

1 cup frozen veggies

1 tablespoon butter

1 or 1/2 onion, minced

2 tsp garlic cloves, minced

11/2 - 2 cups diced cooked chicken breast cubes

1 tablespoon (or to taste) tandoori masala

Because I have no cream, I used the white sauce technique with the olive oil, flour and milk to thicken the milk into a cream-like consistency. (At least as close as I can get to it)

Just heat up the oil in a medium saucepan a bit and add the flour. Whisk well until it looks like a lumpy ugly paste of sorts. (Sorry, no pictures) Make sure you stir this constantly because it will burn incredibly easily. If the paste looks more like flour frying in a bunch of oil, add a bit more flour. Cook the paste for about 5 minutes, or until it doesn't smell starchy anymore. Then turn the heat off and SLOWLY, gradually add the milk, mix well so there are no lumps at all. Now the milk might seem too runny, but just start heating it up on medium again and let some extra water evaporate while whisking it. It doesn't burn as easily at this stage so you can leave it for short periods at a time.

While your cream is processing, melt the 1 tablespoon butter on low and slowly caramelize the onions with the garlic.. It will take a while, but you can leave it for a while without it burning.

When your milk has thickened enough for your taste, add the butter, tomato sauce, salt and cayenne. NOT the veggies yet! Now bring it on a LOW simmer (Don't want it to burn!) and let it simmer for 30 minutes, stirring ocassionally.

When your onions are done, set it aside. Now toss your chicken with the tandoori masala (if you really want-curry powder works too) in a bowl and set aside. I bought a rotisserie chicken from my supermarket and this was the leftovers. There wasn't nearly enough, so I added a bunch of frozen cooked shrimp as well.

After simmering for 30 minutes, add the onions/garlic to the sauce and simmer for another 12 minutes, adding the veggies halfway. Meanwhile, saute your chicken in a bit of oil in the skillet or wok. The shrimp gave off an awful lot of water, so I had to cook the water off before adding the sauce. Mix the sauce together with the chicken. If it seems to watery, cook some of the water off until it is your desired consistency.

Place on a serving plate and garnish with cilantro. Eat it with some rice, or this even makes a great Butter Chicken sandwich. :) Enjoy guys!

It looks a tad like stew...

 What do you think? Win, or fail?

Want the regular recipe? It makes about 50% more, so it will ask for more ingredients than the altered version. CLICKIE

MERRY CHRISTMAS WORLD!

Merry xmas!!!! yesterday was really busy, so I'll be posting up the stuff I made today. A real quick post today basically, it's christmas after all! I made bread pudding and eggnog yesterday.

The bread pudding was ok, but it wasn't completely cooked yet, maybe that's why it was  mushy. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

10 slices white bread, cut into cubes
1/4 cup margarine, melted
1-2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
6 eggs
3/4 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups hot milk
1 pinch ground nutmeg

 

 

First, preheat the oven to 375F. Then, cut your bread up into cubes. Then mix the cinammon and butter together (1 or 2 tsp of cinnamon to your taste) and pour it over your bread cubes in a bowl. Toss the cubes before transferring it to a 2 quart baking dish. The dish might seem a bit small, but trust me, it's just the right size.

See? Exactly right.

In the same bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until dissolved. Stir in the vanilla and salt and whisk the hot milk in GRADUALLY. You don't want the egg to curdle!

No curdles :O!

Now pour the mix all over your bread cubes...

And sprinkle the nutmeg over top before leave it to soak for 5 minutes.

Before 5 minutes

After 5 minutes. Look different?

Pop it in the oven for 35-45 minutes, or when you insert a knife in the middle, it comes out clean. While this was baking I prepared the turkey

TURKEY!

It was basic; chop up some onions, celery and carrots with some baby potatoes to fill the bottom of the roasting pan and rub the turkey with a lil' salt and pepper and butter. Ta-da! By then, the bread pudding was cooked, at least I thought it was. You see, I didn't check it :( Oops!

Not bad at all

I popped the turkey in for about 3 1/4 hours then made my eggnog. 

Ingredients
6 eggs
3 cups milk
8 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, ground

Pretty thick, considering we didn't use cream, but make sure you mix and refridgerate it well. THIS CONTAINS RAW EGGS. Anyways, in a large bowl, beat the eggs using an electric beater 

 

 

By turn, add milk & sugar.

Sugah

Milk

Continue beating until mixture thickens slightly. Add in the vanilla essence & ground nutmeg.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled (at least 3 hours).

Eggnog :)

Looks good? It's pretty good, but I suggest you cut the vanilla down by half or by 1 tsp at least, it's strong. Later on in the day, we finally got to eat that cheesecake! I took a picture of it finally.

See them blotches? :S

I didn't put any coolwhip on top--too lazy--but the icing was from that snowman decorating cupcake thing from a day or two ago. It was scrumptious, by the way, but we only ate half of it. 

I wish everyone a merry Christmas and a fantastically Happy Holiday! Don't forget it's boxing Day tomorrow :)