Chicken Tikka Balti Ceylon
Created | Updated Mar 21, 2005
After much consultation with my favourite curry restaurants back in Birmingham, and a fair amount of experimentation in the kitchen, this is the closest I can get to an authentic restaurant-style curry. Obviously, the recipe is hugely flexible - leave out some of the chillies if you like it milder; take out spices if you haven't got them; leave out the lemon juice and add some tinned tomatoes and less stock for a more bhuna-like recipe. I happen to like this one with paneer, an Indian cheese which absorbs a lot of the sauce flavours and should be added (cubed) near the end of cooking. The key ingredients, as far as I can see, are the ginger and fenugreek, which turn an average home-curry into a superlative restaurant-one.
Ingredients (Serves 4)
- 1lb of chicken breast, chopped
- 1/2 pint natural yoghurt
- 1 dessert spoon commercial tandoori/tikka powder1
- 6 small, fresh green chillies, finely chopped
- 2 inches of fresh ginger, minced
- 2 large (or 3 small) cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tbsp whole cumin seeds
- 1 tbsp whole fenugreek seeds
- Seeds from 6 cardomom pods
- 1 dessertspoon whole black mustard seeds
- 1 large onion, coarsely chopped
- 1 pint beef stock2
- 1/2 tube tomato purée
- Juice of 2 lemons
- Fresh coriander leaves
What to do
- Marinate the chicken in the yoghurt, tandoori powder, chillies, ginger and garlic for 4-24 hours.
- Fry off the onion in a splash of oil until it softens. Add the cumin, fenugreek, cardomom and mustard seeds and continue to fry until the spices start sizzling.
- Add the chicken and all of the marinade ingredients and continue to cook until the chicken is cooked through. For this reason, I prefer to chop my chicken relatively finely.
- Add the stock and tomato purée. Adjust the heat to a moderate simmer and reduce down to a thick sauce (should take about 20 minutes). About halfway through the reduction process add the lemon juice.
- Remove from the heat, garnish with the fresh coriander and serve with pilau rice, naan breads, popadums and lime pickle.
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