Butter Chicken

It's been over a month since my last post. Whoops! Sorry! Anyway, last week I went to TJ's (that's the fancy way of saying Trader Joe's) and bought a frozen butter chicken dish. I was inspired. For dinner tonight, I am going to make my own butter chicken. I have been looking up recipes all day, and have come to a conclusion. Butter chicken uses a LOT of spices. When I say a lot, I mean a lot of random, very unusual spices. I was able to find Garam Masala in the store, but Tandoori Masala has been proving quite an issue.  I found one recipe that I like (here), but I am going to tweak it a bit, because I can't find this tandoori spice.

Here are the ingredients I used:

1 3/4 cup butter, divided
1 onion, minced
1 TBSP minced garlic
1 (15 oz) can of Tomato sauce
2 1/4 cups milk
2 tsp salt
1.5 pounds skinless, boneless chicken thighs

And here is the recipe I used:

To begin, I made the heavy cream the original recipe called for. I combined the milk and 3/4 cup of melted butter and stirred until combined. It seemed easier at the time.  I also found out I could do that from this website.  ***I did this buttermilk for this recipe. It came out way too oily.  In the end, use 3 cups of milk and 3 tbsp lemon juice.  LEAVE OUT THE 3/4 CUP BUTTER.  It became way too oily and fatty, to the point that I scraped the excess fat off the dish this morning.***

Next, I got the biggest non-stick pan I had and put a few tablespoons of butter in the pan with the onions. I stirred in the onion and garlic until the onion was softened, about 5 minutes.  After those were soft I added the rest of the butter, the tomato sauce, cream and spices.  This simmered about 10 minutes.  Finally, I added the chicken, which I had cubed.  I let that simmer for 25 minutes, until the chicken was done.  When this is simmering, you have to watch to make sure the cream does NOT boil.  This will make for a nasty, separated dish.

To make sure this meal was gluten free, I served it with jasmine rice. I put 1 cup rice with 1.5 cups water in a pot and brought it to a boil.  I then covered the pot and let it cook until there was no water left.  If you taste your rice and decided you would like it cooked longer, but already took it off the heat, cover it back up and let it sit for 10 minutes.  The steam in the pot will let the rice cook for a bit longer.  (That tip was brought to you by Patrick).

This dish can also be served with Naan, a traditional Indian flat bread.  They sell an excellent one at TJ's, in the frozen food section.  I recommend the garlic flavored, it is simply so much better.

UPDATE:

So I learned the hard way that making buttermilk isn's actually butter and milk. My mom and Patrick both told me I was stupid.  I have actually made REAL buttermilk before. For every cup of milk, you add one tbsp lemon juice or vinegar.  Because I used extra butter and less milk, the result was very oily.  I put it in the fridge last night, and when I took it out this morning I cracked off the excess fat. It had hardened on the top so I was able to just break it off and throw it away.  Also, when I reheat this today, I am going to add some lemon juice.  The recipe was just lacking something, and Patrick suggested lemons. Also, I bought chicken thighs for this. I thought they went well, and they soaked up the flavor of the sauce quite well. I am a bit disappointed I didn't actually measure how much chicken I put into the sauce, though, because I have almost twice as much sauce as I do chicken. It goes great over rice, though!

Peach Cobbler

Yesterday I went to Shoppers with Bryan and Jeanine. Jeanine is my little sister in TBS, and as of Saturday, it is official! She was initiated! Anyway, I digress.  At shoppers I saw some delicious looking peaches, so I bought 4 giant ones.  Later that night, my aunt posted this recipe on my wall.  It was MEANT TO BE! As I was reading, I realized I didn't have any of the King Arthur gf baking mix that was referenced in the recipe. So, naturally, I improvised.  Instead of using the baking mix, I used King Arthur gf flour and 1 tbsp baking powder.  Ultimately, I ended up using this recipe with the gf flour substitute.

The cobbler was AMAZING.  It was a nice golden brown on the top and the inside was sweet.  Where the sugar has caramelized around the edges gave a nice crunch to the soft peaches.  The lemon juice gave a hint of tartness after you ate the peaches.  In hindsight, I think a bit more salt would be appropriate, and some nutmeg.  This was just generally under seasoned.  Also, I wish I had some blueberries present to throw into the mix.  Blueberry peach cobbler just sounds so much better.

PS. Sorry for the descriptors used above. Last weeks episode of Next Food Network Star was about using actual descriptive words (not delicious and awesome) to describe a dish. I tried my hand at it above.

 PPS. Patrick is my lovely model in the photo to the left.