"Make (or eat!) a traditional local dish."
This is a tricky one, because I don’t live
somewhere that has a traditional dish. In fact if you google it you get
“Hampshire is famous for sheep lamb, beef and watercress.” Erm ok. Watercress
it is then!? Unfortunately I don’t really like watercress, the only thing I’ve
ever liked it in was when I added some to pea soup. But that’s boring.
So let’s look a bit further afield. I live in
England and on St George’s day, the local pubs quite often serve as their
specials of the day, the 2 most popular dishes in England: Fish & Chips
and Chicken Tikka Masala. Yep, Chicken Tikka Masala; a dish invented by an
Indian restaurant to suit the British palate. Legend has it, it came about when it
was improvised in an Indian Restaurant in Scotland, because a Glaswegian bus
driver found the regular tikka too dry!
Most recipes I found had tinned, chopped tomatoes
in and Mr A did look truly horrified when he saw me opening a carton of
passata! But the only time I ever remember eating chicken tikka masala in my
pregan days, the sauce was smooth – no lumps of tomato. It was also BRIGHT fire
engine red, but that’s by the by. So I went with passata so that it would be
like the one I remembered.
This dish was super freakin easy and really tasty.
All I did was fry a chopped onion and a grated
thumb size piece of ginger in a bit of coconut oil. Then I added 2 generous
tablespoons of tikka masala paste (I used Pataks) and cooked this for a minute
or too.
Then I added a chopped green pepper, half a
cup/125ml of passata (mine had garlic and herbs added) and half a cup/125ml of
hot water and a veggie stock cube. Lid on, left it to cook for 15 minutes.
Then I added 150g of fry’s chicken style strips and
put the lid back on to cook it for 5 more minutes. I like to add these near the
end of cooking, as too much cooking in liquid doesn’t do nice things to the
texture!
Lastly, I stirred through half a cup/125ml of light
coconut milk and just cooked it for a couple more minutes to heat through.
I served it with
plain old basmati rice.
Laterz
xXx
The redness of tikka masalas is always a bit off putting. This looks much nicer. I really like those Fry's strips and pleased to also see Quorn have just announced they are going to start doing vegan pieces. I can see many curries ahead in my future :)
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing a cooking programme years ago where they made it and used an absolute tonne of food colouring! yuck.
DeleteI'm excited for vegan quorn too!
I've never had this dish, but it looks really good. You can't go wrong with Indian or Indian-adapted dishes.
ReplyDeleteNothing wrong with Patak's curry paste! Your curry looks lush.
ReplyDeleteI would love to eat a massive bowl of that! Smooth sauce trumps chunky sauce any day. And you can't ever go wrong with plain old basmati rice.
ReplyDelete