Butter Chicken and Aloo Palek, two of my mother’s favorite Indian foods.

Butter chicken is a really easy dish to make. It takes left over tandoori chicken (chicken marinated in yogurt and spices and grilled or roasted) and then puts it into a tomato-cream sauce to stew for  thirty minutes to an hour. It should not go any longer than that time or it will become tough. The butter in Butter Chicken is something of a misnomer. Despite there being both butter and cream in the dish the phrase in Hindi for this dish actually refers to the smoothness of the sauce, buttery chicken would be a more accurate term.

The dish came to be when an Englishman was at an Indian restaurant and stated that his tandoori chicken was dry. The chef was surprised and made a sauce to go with it that had cream, tomato paste and garam masala in it. The man loved the new sauce, especially because of it’s texture.

Aloo Palek is a slightly more complicated dish that is very flavorful. It is vegetarian as well. It is made of potatoes in a pureed spinach sauce that has a little cream in it for consistency’s sake. It is somewhat more complicated than Butter Chicken because it has more steps, the spinach has to be both blanched and pureed, not just blanched as is common in some other dishes.

Butter chicken is considered in some cookbooks to be a dish that is preferred by Sikhs. A possible reason for that is that the other religion that comes from India, Hinduism, has mostly vegetarians or vegans.

Recipe for Butter chicken (serves 4-6)

2 yellow onions

1 1/2 tsp garlic paste

1/2 tsp ginger paste

14 oz canned chopped tomatoes

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

pinch of sugar

2 tbsp clarified butter

1/2 cup water

1 tbsp tomato paste

3 tbsp butter, cut into pieces.

1/2 tsp garum masala

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1 cooked tandoori chicken (just use a rotisserie chicken if you don’t have a tandoori chicken, the difference is not profound) meat taken off the bone.

4tbsp heavy cream

salt and pepper

fresh cilantro or fennugreek leaves

yogurt

cashews

 

specialized equipment

food processor

wok

 

Roughly chop and puree the onions until smooth.

cook the puréed onions until they are caramelized 5 minutes or so. Add them back to the food processor.

Add chopped tomatoes, garlic paste, ginger paste, cayenne, sugar and salt to the food processor and purée until smooth.

add clarified butter to the wok.  Add the tomato mixture, water and tomato paste.

bring the mixture to a boil then lower to a simmer and cook for 5-7 minutes or until sauce thickens.

Stir in half the butter , garam masala, cumin, coriander. Add chicken as well. Simmer for 10 minutes or until chicken is hot.

lightly beat the cream in a bowl. Add the cream to the sauce. Add the remaining butter and stir until it melts (monter au buerre in French- one of the ways of finishing a sauce)

add chopped cilantro/fennugreek, saving about half for garnish.

serve with rice. (4 cups water, 2 cups rice, 20 minutes covered after it simmers) Garnish with fennugreek and yogurt. Cashews are optional but recommended.

 

garum masala recipe

2 bay leaves

2 cinnamon sticks ( or 2 tbsp ground cinnamon )

8 green cardamom pods, just the seeds. Using a mortar and pestle helps get the seeds without the pods.

2 tbsp cumin seeds

1 1/2 tbsp coriander seeds

1 1/2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp fennugreek seeds.

1 small mace blade

, grind all of these together until everything is powder, an old coffee grinder works well for this.

 

Aloo palek

12 oz waxy potatoes

9 oz spinach leaves

3 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion, julienned

1 jalapeño, seeded

2 tsp garlic paste

2 tsp ginger paste

1 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp ground tumeric

7 oz chopped tomatoes ( approximately 2 whole medium sized tomatoes)

1/2 tsp sugar

1tsp salt

3 tbsp heavy cream

 

specialized equipment

immersion blender or food processor.

 

half or quarter the potatoes, boil them in salted water until tender .

Blanch the spinach in salted water.  Blend spinach into a paste with an immersion blender or food processor.

Heat the oil over medium heat and add the onions to it. Salt the onions.

Cook for 10-13 minutes or until the onions are well caramelized.

Return pan to the heat and add spices. Stir often for 1 minute. Do not burn the spices! Add tomatoes and sugar. Cook 5-6 minutes or until tomatoes have broken down.

Add potatoes, spinach, salt and onions. Cook for 2-3 minutes.

Stir in cream and cook for 1 minute. Taste for seasonings.

Remove from heat and serve hot.

note: for more sauce to potato and onion ratio, double the spinach and spices, doubling the cream is not needed.

 

Here is a picture of both of these dishes in the same bowl.