Two Delhi restaurants both claim to have the right to call themselves the home of the original butter chicken recipe
It’s one of India’s most beloved dishes and can be found bubbling on kitchen stoves or served on silver in restaurants across the country.
But exactly who came up with the recipe for rich and creamy butter chicken has long been a matter of dispute – one that has now reached India’s courts.
Continue reading...The chef said he devised the recipe for ‘Britain’s favourite curry’ after a customer complained that his meal was too dry
A chef who is believed to have invented the chicken tikka masala, regarded as Britain’s favourite curry, has died aged 77.
Ali Ahmed Aslam’s death on Monday was announced by his Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow, which closed for 48 hours as a mark of respect. The eatery announced: “Hey, Shish Snobs … Mr Ali passed away this morning … We are all absolutely devastated and heartbroken.”
Continue reading...Six members receive brief suspensions after years of eating free ‘navy curry’ they were not entitled to
A keen appetite for curry has landed six members of Japan’s maritime self-defence forces (SDF) in trouble, after it emerged that they had been tucking into the dish without paying for up to three years.
The SDF members, including an officer in his 50s, helped themselves to free curry at Hachinohe air base in north-east Japan, apparently ignoring rules requiring them to pay, according to Japanese media reports.
Continue reading...This store-cupboard staple is fantastic in curries and works brilliantly in sweet dishes too, whether you fancy panna cotta, grapefruit cheesecake or a super-rich hot chocolate
Coconut milk has a reliable transformative power, turning humble ingredients into something exotic, enticing and a little festive. In a short amount of time, a couple of aubergines become aubergine curry, for example. Discovering a tin of coconut milk in the cupboard opens up possibilities.
But if you are not a regular user of the stuff, you may be alarmed to find that it’s one of a bewildering array of related by-products, including coconut water, coconut oil, coconut cream, creamed coconut (which comes in a block) and cream of coconut. Are any of these ingredients similar or interchangeable? Sort of. Coconut milk and coconut cream are both made from squeezing the grated flesh of the fruit, with coconut cream being the richer version from the first pressing. If you have a fresh coconut, it is possible to do this yourself.
Continue reading...Tom Cruise doesn’t just have a single chicken tikka masala when he goes to Birmingham – he has another one straight after. Has any man ever been more on-brand?
When Tom Cruise commits to something, he commits. When a Mission: Impossible stunt called for him to climb up the outside of the world’s tallest building, he actually climbed up the outside of the world’s tallest building. When Collateral required him to become an invisible assassin, he temporarily became a Fed-Ex driver to teach himself anonymity. When he fell in love with Katie Holmes, he did it with such couch-leaping intensity that it derailed his career for half a decade.
So when Tom Cruise went to Birmingham to have a curry, he really went to Birmingham to have a curry. When Tom Cruise went to Birmingham to have a curry, he did it with the same vigour that he uses to ride motorbikes or jump out of planes or scream at crew-members for not following Covid compliance protocols. Which is to say that when Tom Cruise went to Birmingham to have a curry, Tom Cruise went to Birmingham and had two curries, one after the other.
Continue reading...From Asma Khan’s saag paneer to Lopè Ariyo’s suya lamb, our exploration of the wider world of curry takes in recipes from south Asia, Nigeria and Japan
It was dal that done it, in Luton, Lucknow, London. When the raisin-studded school dinners of my childhood were replaced with sophisticated south-Asian cooking. Here we also celebrate some of the wider world of curry: recipes from Nigeria, Japan, Vietnam, the Caribbean. From Uyen Luu’s ginger duck to Shuko Oda’s keema curry, and Asma Khan’s saag paneer to Lopè Ariyo’s suya lamb. There is a pumpkin curry, a prawn curry, a black-eyed bean curry; Vivek Singh’s perfect vindaloo, Meera Sodha’s tomato curry and Madhur Jaffrey’s peerless chicken korma. In short, the 20 best curry dishes from some of the finest cookery writers around.
Continue reading...The high-protein meat substitute is one of the world’s most versatile ingredients. Here’s how to use it in everything from tasty stir-fries to nutritious smoothies
On 11 January 1770, Benjamin Franklin, then in London, wrote a letter to a friend in Philadelphia, enclosing some soya bean seeds (“Chinese garavances”, referring to garbanzos, or chick-peas) and forwarding a recipe for a type of cheese that could be derived from them, which he called “tau-fu”.
Franklin may never have actually tasted tofu, and certainly didn’t know much about making it, much less cooking with it. To some extent this ignorance persists in the west, where tofu is prized as a high-protein meat substitute, albeit one so bland that it is basically a texture awaiting a flavour. Tofu may be versatile, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we know what to do with it and, unless you’re a vegan, it can be hard to get excited about it. If that’s the case, here are 17 recipes to change your mind.
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