What do you get when you cross hot Indian food with the
English love of tomatoes and all things creamy? Chicken Tikka Masala is a
famous combination of chicken tikka and masala. Chicken tikka is a marinated
piece of meat cooked in a tandoor, an Indian oven made of clay and coal-fired.
Masala is gravy commonly made out of some kind of tomato gravy or puree with
cream and various Indian spices. It is technically a mild curry dish, though
the addition of sometimes large amounts of tartrazine causes the dish to often
look orange. In other recipes, it can look anything from red to orange to
green.
Chicken Tikka Masala is possibly the most popular Indian
dish in the world, and has arguably replaced tandoori chicken as the flagship
of Indian food, including on the subcontinent itself; it even has a musical
written singing its praises. In the United Kingdom alone, Marks & Spencer,
the famous English retailer, claims to sell 18 tons a week of the chicken in
Tikka Masala Sandwiches, while 23 million servings a year are sold at Indian
restaurants. Sainsbury’s, another retailer, sells 1.6 million dishes every
year, and stocks 16 different products containing what is affectionately known
as CTM.10 tons a day are manufactured by Noon Products to later be sold at
supermarkets.
The chicken, though widely considered an Indian dish, does
not hail from India. Kitchens from London to Glasgow claim to have originated
the dish, which was first seen in the late 1960s. According to urban legend,
the dish was created by a Bangladeshi chef in Britain when he served chicken
tandoor to an Englishman only to be asked, “where’s my gravy?” The result? A
mixture of cream of tomato soup and spices, which he called masala. And like
that, chicken tikka masala was born, an early example of what we would now call
fusion cooking. It is now so popular that British politician and Foreign
Secretary Robin Cook once described it as, “a true British national dish,”
citing its combination of authentic Indian cooking with the British desire to
have their meat served with gravy.
What goes into a chicken tikka masala? Well, a 1998 survey
indicated that of 48 versions, the only common ingredient was chicken. A common
recipe includes chicken marinated overnight in yoghurt, ginger, garlic, cardamom
powder, cumin, white pepper, and other spices. The chicken is cooked briefly in
the hot tandoor and is then served with a sauce made of tomato, ginger,
garlic, cream, green and red pepper, and an assortment of spices. The sauce is
poured over the chicken after it is cooked. In contrast to tandoori chicken, on
which it is based, the taste is mild and creamy, rather than spicy.
Is chicken tikka masala an English or an Indian dish? The
answer is unclear, as it has been adopted so readily that it is served in
almost every Indian restaurant, an indication that Indians have accepted it as
their own. Several English firms now specialize in exporting the dish back to India.
Whatever its origins, however, it is now enjoyed by millions each year.
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