A Curry Odyssey Begins: Butter Chicken

As per my last post, I have set foot on the the road to becoming a Dad Who Can Cook a Mean Curry.

I started with this recipe, via Steph at A Year of Crockpotting, because it looked easy. I adjusted the quantities and ingredients to suit the size of my family and to accommodate availability of local ingredients, whipped it together in half an hour and popped it in the Crockpot. Gotta love the Crockpot.

The end result was, we all agreed, a jolly passable Butter Chicken. I used Chicken Breast, because that's what we had, but of course it's not best suited to use in the slow cooker, so thighs or even drumsticks would probably have been better.

I also added the brown sugar in the last hour of cooking, because while the curry had a lot of flavour, it was spicy but not sweet. I suspect that perhaps coconut cream and even plain yoghurt in the US are sweetened, which would have compensated, but since ours aren't, I added brown sugar. What are you going to do? I said I wanted a toned-down, sweet and creamy curry, and that's what we got. Nomnomnom.

As a sidenote, I tried making Naan bread as well. That didn't work out quite so well, and will be covered in Episode 2 of the Great Curry Odyssey. Meanwhile, I'm still open to any great curry recipes you might have to offer. Thanks to Le Laquet for the Dahl recipe. I'll put it on the list!

Butter Chicken (Slow-Cooker Recipe)

Serves 4

Ingredients

600g boneless, skinless chicken breast

1/2 an Onion, Sliced

3 Garlic Cloves, Finely Sliced

7 Cardamon Pods

1 t Curry Powder

1/4 t Kaitaia Fire/Other Tobasco Sauce

1 t Garam Masala

1/4 C Brown Sugar

1/2 t Crushed Fresh Ginger

2 T Butter

50g Tomato Paste

200ml Coconut Cream

1 T Lemon Juice

1 Cup Plain, Unsweetened Yoghurt

3 T Cream

Slice the Chicken into roughly 2 inch slabs and drop it in the crockpot. Add the chopped onion and garlic.

Either sew the cardamon pods together, or wrap them in a little cheesecloth with some cooking twine,

like so:

Mysteriously, my cheesecloth vanished during cooking, which seemed to defeat the purpose, and means that we all ate at least a little of it in the process. But somewhere in the leftovers (tomorrow's lunch) I'm going to find a little piece of string and a whole mouthful of cardamon. Nom...nom...nyuk.

Add these to the crockpot, along with the dry ingredients and the ginger. Stir it all up. Add the tomato paste, butter, coconut cream and lemon juice, stir it all in and turn the crockpot on to high for 3 3/4 hours, or on low for 7 hours.

In the last 15 mins, stir in the yoghurt and cream.Serve with Jasmine Rice, fresh chilled cucumber, steamed veges and naan bread - preferably better than the ones I made!