“Butter chicken” and rotis
October 17, 2011 in Uncategorized
Buttermilk, butter chicken spice and ground cumin…sounds good, in theory, doesn’t it? Well, that’s what I thought when I decided to make my own version of butter chicken curry. And, while the results were edible, they were decidedly “meh!” Why reinvent the wheel, you might ask? Why not use a recipe that has been tested and proven to work? Well, the answer to that question is lack of patience and a bit of laziness. Every recipe for butter chicken I looked at required some planning and prior preparation. “That stuff is for the birds”, I thought. So why am I blogging about a flop? I thought maybe you could learn from my mistakes and you could give suggestions as to what I should do in future. Oh, while I was cooking the chicken, I also found that I had no tomato paste in the house so I substitued with 1 tin of chopped tomatoes in juice. So this is what I did…
500g chicken breast fillets, bashed with meat mallet and cut into strips
1 cup buttermilk
2 tbls butter chicken spice
2 tsp ground jeera/cumin
I mixed all these ingredients together and put it in the fridge to marinade while I made the rotis.
Later on I will fry this off in:
50g butter
1 large onion
1 tbs crushed garlic
1 tin of chopped tomatoes with juice
Mitzi’s Roti Recipe
3 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup of sunflower oil
30gr butter ghee
1 ½ cups (approx.) hot water
Sift the cake flour and salt into a large bowl.
Sprinkle the oil over the flour and mix into the flour.
Rub in the butter ghee into flour.
Add enough boiling water into the flour to form a soft dough and knead well.
Roll the dough into a long sausage roll. Cut the dough into 15 +- even pieces.
Mould the dough into balls and dust with cake flour.
Roll out thinly into a circle.
Roti can be basted with melted ghee (optional).
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I set the rotis aside and started making the curry. I heated about 50g of butter in a pot and fried off 1 large chopped onion and some crushed garlic. I then added the chicken in buttermilk mixture and allowed this to cook for about 5 minutes stirring occasionally. I then added the chopped tomotoes, stirred it through and turned down the heat. I allowed this to simmer for about 15 minutes with the lid on. I then placed a large spoonful of the curry into a roti and rolled it up. I think my main problem was the lack of seasoning (salt, pepper etc). I very rarely cook with salt and, since it was my first experience with that particular brand of butter chicken seasoning, I didn’t want to over salt the food. This was fairly easily rectified at the table as each person could add their own salt but it’s not quite the same. I think if I make this again, I would definately add a good pinch of salt and use the tomato paste instead of the canned tomatoes. I will also use the yogurt/fresh cream as suggested in most recipes instead of the buttermilk. |
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mitzireddy said on October 17, 2011
annoying when that happens – run out of ingredients – has happened to most of us at some point. For a authentic flavour butter ghee has to be a core ingredient for a tasty butter chicken curry. I do have a simple recipe that is not faddy. Will probably only do a post late next month
pinkpolkadot said on October 17, 2011
We all make some flops,so it is good to know that other bloggres are also doing this!
rumtumtigger said on October 18, 2011
Thanks Pink. I wondered whether I should blog about this because most bloggers posts are so professional and flashy. But I thought that there must be a few bloggers just like me who will experiment every now and then with not so wonderful results.
rumtumtigger said on October 18, 2011
You know when you over-buy on what particular ingredient one month, then the following month you think, I had so much, I’m sure I don’t need to buy again. That’s what happened this time. And then I had to fight with my rotis too because they just didn’t want to roll out without folding over on themselves. I realized then how some people don’t like cooking. I’ve been generally quite lucky to have good experiences most of the time and things turn out ok. But I can imagine people who have a bad experience making something the first time. I wouldn’t want to try it again either. Thanks for responding and I look forward to your Butter Chicken recipe ;o)
kupcake_03 said on October 18, 2011
there is no shame in a flop! good on you for posting the good and the bad!
rumtumtigger said on October 18, 2011
Thank you sweetie! I was really nervous about posting about this experience but I threw caution to the wind coz it’s not like I have a rep to protect and I thought that maybe some of my readers had similar experiences and that it was okay! ;o)