Butter Chicken

People who know me know that I love Indian food.  Curry is one of my favorite spices to cook with and I have a ton of recipes available on Clearly Delicious that take advantage of said spice (see Curry in a Hurry and Curry Rice).

When my friend Lydia first introduced me to a recipe in the Curry family called "Butter Chicken" or "Murg Makhani," I knew that it had to be clearly delicious--consisting of cloves, cinnamon, peppercorns, cumin, and much much more, the sauce and chicken combination promised a full bodied flavor that was melt-in-your mouth authentic in the Indian cuisine family.

Although the name of this recipe "Butter Chicken" suggests a sauce that is primarily butter based, the name is indeed a misnomer--instead of being butter based, the sauce consists of greek yogurt and tomato sauce with melted butter added at the end (2 tablespoons).  This recipe is significantly healthier than one might think.  Regardless of its name, the sauce is a creamy, flavorful, mildly spicy sauce-based dish served over white or brown rice.

Butter Chicken
Lydia found this recipe on the About.com website (recipe can be found here).  The recipe is written by Petrina Verma Sarkar, one of the About.com Indian food writers.  Follow the below recipe for an authentic, tasty Indian entree, but if you can't find a couple of the exact spices (i.e., kasuri methi), don't worry too much--the other spices easily balance out one or two missing spices.

Ingredients:
* 1 kg boneless chicken skin remove
* Juice of 1 lime
* Salt to taste
* 1 tsp red chilli powder (adjust to suit your taste)
* 6 cloves
* 8-10 peppercorns
* 1 inch stick of cinnamon
* 2 bay leaves
* 8-10 almonds
* Seeds from 3-4 pods of cardamom
* 1 cup fresh yoghurt (must not be sour)
* 3 tbsps vegetable/canola/sunflower cooking oil
* 2 onions chopped
* 2 tsps garlic paste
* 1 tsp ginger paste
* 2 tsps coriander powder
* 1 tsp cumin powder
* 1/4 tsp turmeric powder
* 1 can (400g or 14 oz) of tomato paste
* 1/2 litre chicken stock
* 2 tbsps kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves)
* 3 tbsps unmelted, soft butter
* Salt to taste
* Coriander leaves to garnish


Other Accompanying Dish:
* Prepare 6-7 servings white, or brown rice.  (Note: I use a handy-dandy, rice cooker.  I'll never have to wait for water to boil again!)


1.) Begin by marinating the chicken: add the juice of one lime and 1 tsp chili powder in a bowl with the chicken.  Mix and cover the chicken thoroughly; wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour.

2.) Roast cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon, bay leaves, and almonds till lightly dark.  Cool and add cardamom seeds.  Grind until powder in a coffee grinder.

3.) Mix yogurt with the above ground spice powder with cumin, coriander, and turmeric.  Add to chicken mixture.  Mix thoroughly and allow to refrigerate for another hour.

4.) When chicken mixture has marinaded for an hour, sauté onions in a saucepan with a tablespoon of olive oil (or butter) until golden brown and translucent.  Add garlic paste and ginger. Sauté for one more minute.

5.) Add chicken and cook with garlic/ginger/onion mixture.  Chicken should be browned, but not cooked completely (you'll want to finish cooking the chicken in the sauce with the next step).

6.) Once chicken is thoroughly cooked, add tomato paste, chicken stock, and remaining yogurt sauce mixture.  Cook till chicken is tender and sauce has reduced by one half.

7.) Melt butter in separate saucepan and pour over chicken and sauce mixture.

8.) Mix to integrate and pour sauce mixture in a deep serving pan.  Serve with white or brown rice.  Makes 5-6 servings.  Enjoy!

Subscribe to Clearly Delicious by Email

Curry Rice

Friday night we decided to cook a nice dinner for Joe (who was leaving for a month of training with the army in the woods...somewhere...in America).  In Clearly Delicious style, we sent him off with a delicious assortment of Indian cuisine--Butter Chicken, Edamame, Na'an, and of course, Curry Rice.

This Curry Rice is loaded with healthy veggies, natural remedy ingredients such as honey and olive oil, and makes for one heck of a fulfilling Indian rice dish.  Make as a side dish, or as an entree (hot or cold) and you will have treat equally Indian and clearly delicious.

Curry Rice
This recipe comes from Elise's blog, Simply Recipes, and can be found here.  Elise suggests in the original to serve the rice dish cold, but I find the combination of warm rice, honey, and freshly cooked vegetables to demand being served hot.  Regardless, serve hot or cold for a curry rice dish that is healthy, flavorful, and extremely clearly delicious.

Ingredients:
* 4-5 cups cooked brown, or white rice
* 1 onion, chopped
* Curry paste, or powder, to taste (Elise suggests yellow, or red, but not green, and NOT Thai)
* Olive oil, to taste
* Cumin, to taste
* Chili powder, to taste
* Sesame oil, to taste (optional if unavailable)
* 1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
* 1 cup raisins
* 1 apple, cored and chopped
* Honey, to taste
* Salt, to taste
* 2 celery stocks, washed and chopped
* 1 cup edamame, cooked
* 1/4 bell pepper (red), chopped
* 1/4 bell pepper (green), chopped

1.) Prepare rice and set aside.

2.) Prep your ingredients: chop the bell pepper, onion, celery, and apple.  Set aside.

3.) Begin by sautéing onions in olive oil.  Sprinkle with curry powder/paste to preference and cook until translucent.

4.) Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook the edamame separately while onions are browning.  (For more information on how to cook edamame, see the "Edamame with Thyme" post).

5.) Add remaining chopped vegetables--peppers, celery.  Cook for several minutes until all vegetables are soft, but still retain a certain amount of crunch (the al dente of the veggie community if you will).

6.) Add cooked edamame, mix to combine, and remove from heat.

7.) Now prepare the rice dish.  Place rice in an oversized mixing bowl (trust me, you'll need it!), and add the cooked vegetables.

8.) Add 1 cup raisins and drizzle with honey to taste.

9.) Add chopped apple and mix to combine.  Season to taste preferences with additional curry, salt and pepper, cumin, olive and sesame oil, cilantro, and chili powder.  There are few measurements on this recipe as everyone's taste palette is especially different when combining the salt and pepper with the sweet of apples, raisins, and honey.

10.) Serve either hot or cold.  Makes 8-10.  Enjoy!

Subscribe to Clearly Delicious by Email

Edamame with Thyme

Preparing an appetizer doesn't need to be a huge process.  Chances are good that you've spent plenty of time either grocery shopping, prepping the food, cooking it, and even thinking about a big meal.  Further, although fancy appetizers and tappas are great, why prepare an appetizer that overshadows your main course? Worse, why prepare an appetizer that's so heavy (either calorically, or in composition) that you find your main course seemingly unimportant?


The solution? Edamame.  Edamame is a baby soy bean found more and more commonly on menus and restaurants these days.  Asian restaurants famously serve them in their pods as a light appetizer before eating sushi, but many times, you can find them sans pods in the freezer section of Whole Foods, or other grocery produce sections.


Prepare this dish as a light appetizer to any number of Asian or Indian cuisine meals.  Lightly toss with salt, pepper, and fresh thyme, and you'll have an appetizer that is both healthy and clearly delicious!


Edamame with Thyme
This recipe comes from nowhere in particular, but the result of cooking tons of edamame for the Curry Rice Recipe (available here).  The great thing about this dish is that you can adjust the seasonings to whatever you have available (i.e., rosemary instead of thyme, or mint instead of thyme).  Adjust seasonings to your personal preference.


Ingredients:
* 1 cup cooked edamame
* sprigs of fresh thyme, to taste
* salt and pepper, to taste


1.) Bring a small pot of water to a boil; add 1 cup edamame.


2.) Boil at medium-high heat for 5-8 minutes, or until edamame is fully cooked (soft, but still retaining a bit of crunch).


3.) Pour out edamame and water into a large strainer.   Allow to cool for a few minutes.

4.) Transfer to bowl and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and fresh thyme.  Toss to combine and serve.

Subscribe to Clearly Delicious by Email

Szechwan Eggplant Stir Fry

When I'm fixing food primarily for myself, there are those dishes that I make that really only I, vegetarians, vegans, and other veggie-happy folks like.  Basically, when given the choice, I often decide to prepare foods that are primarily vegetable based like stir fry dishes, roasted vegetables, salads, etc.  I don't normally cook these dishes out of a "stay healthy craze" (although such dishes do have their benefits!), but more out of what I crave on a regular basis.  As I mention in many of my posts--I LOVE vegetables.  I think they're the most flavorful, delicious, nutritionally packed dishes. Further, if prepared properly, vegetables can be fixed in a plethora of ways that don't seem like you're "eating your vegetables" the way mom once demanded!

Tonight, I made a dish in this category: Szechwan Eggplant Stir Fry courtesy of Tyler Florence over at Food Network (you can find the original recipe here).  Many of my friends know Tyler Florence as one of my several TV boyfriends (I can't help myself! His fast-paced/"this is so easy!"/"I like butter and cream" style of cooking really gets me excited about the cooking process).  Plus, I know that if I make something by Tyler Florence (just like if I make something by Elise Bauer) it's going to be a hit every time.  As usual, this recipe has several changes--I used regular onions instead of green onions, less oil and more water than directed, traditional eggplant rather than Japanese eggplant, and a combination of chili flakes instead of a red chili.  Depending on your speed of cooking, this can be a pretty quick recipe to make, but I really took my sweet time getting the eggplant prepared just right, so it can take longer.  Whichever way you make this dish--either Tyler's or my own--it's guaranteed to be clearly delicious!

Szechwan Eggplant Stir Fry
When preparing this dish, make sure to cook the eggplant all the way through.  Eggplant is a funny vegetable in that we hardly ever eat it raw because it tastes..well...not disgusting, but somewhat impalatable.  So, when pan-frying your purple friend, make sure that the eggplant pieces are tender on each side, not crispy or stiff.  This way, you'll have a juicier main ingredient that's guaranteed to absorb and contribute to the sauce it's prepared with.

* 1 medium sized eggplant, ripe & cut into 1inch diagonal pieces
* 3 tablespoons peanut oil
* 1 tablespoon soybean oil
* kosher salt and cracked pepper, to taste
* 1 small onion, chopped
* 3 large garlic cloves, minced or pressed
* 1/2-1 tablespoon red chili flakes
* 1-2 tablespoons of ginger, or one 1-inch piece of fresh ginger peeled and minced
* 1/2 cup chicken broth
* 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
* 3 tablespoons soy sauce
* 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
* 1 tablespoon corn starch
* 1 tablespoon sesame seeds to garnish, optional

1.) First, prepare the eggplant.  Wash and halve your eggplant making sure to fully remove the top stem.  Halve both halves of the eggplant (you'll have four medium sized eggplant pieces).  For me, this cutting process seems very logical given what Tyler Florence suggests you do in the original recipe--since I'm working with a regular medium-to-large eggplant and not 4-5 Japanese eggplants, then separating the eggplant into quadrants gives us a similar size and preparational effect.
2.) Once you have your quadrants, cut the quadrants into strips at a diagonal; then, cut diagonal strips into 1 inch pieces.
3.) Add oil to large saucepan and heat up on medium heat.  Once you begin to see smoke/steam rising from the pan, add a layer of eggplant.  Salt and pepper eggplant to taste and flip strips to cook both sides.  Tyler Florence suggests cooking until eggplant is "sticky" at about three minutes.  However, depending on the heat of the stove, the size of the pieces, your crisp-to-soggy eggplant preference, etc., it's really going to depend how long you cook these pieces.  For me, my 1 inch diagonal pieces (at a medium-to-small thickness) took closer to 5-10 minutes depending on the heat.  The best way to determine when to pull your pieces is when they've one, been cooked for a few minutes on both sides and two, are tender on both sides.  You can decide how much longer to cook them from there.
4.) Once the layer of eggplant is cooked, place on a separate dish and cook another layer of eggplant in the same manner until all of the vegetable is prepared.  This may take around 20-30 minutes depending on your cooking speed and other variants.  Also, note about the oil here: as with many of Tyler Florence's recipes, he suggests additions of butter, oil, cream, etc. according to your preference.  Here, he suggests that you continue to "add oil as needed."  Unfortuntely, this instruction can be a dangerous tip nutritionally and flavorwise. The way I see it, I want to eat my vegetables, but I don't want them to slide down covered in oil right? What's the point? Most Americans will probably follow this instruction and douse the pan with oil every five minutes.  If you're unlike these people, or want a healthier way of preparing this dish, then add water to the pan in the same way you'd add oil.  Every time you add water, you can also add a tablespoon or two of oil.  Again, personal preference here!
5.) Now that the eggplant is cooked, prepare the sauce.  Go ahead and mix the soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, corn starch, and brown sugar in a small mixing bowl.  Mix to integrate and so that the sugar and the corn starch are fully dissolved.
6.) Add chopped onion, minced/pressed garlic, and ginger, to the hot pan you cooked the eggplant in.  Cook for one minute or until "aromatic."  Add 1/2 cup chicken broth and cook for a couple more minutes.  Add the brown sauce you prepared to this mixture and cook for one minute.
7.) Now, add the prepared eggplant to this sauce and cook for 1 minute.
8.) Remove from heat and serve over rice or pasta.  Enjoy!


Subscribe to Clearly Delicious by Email