Chicken Curry

In theory, when I said that I wanted to try new recipes and cook I suppose you imagined that I'd be cooking from scratch and things like that. I think that's what I'd imagined too. I do like cooking from scratch, but I also enjoy prepared things. Like curry sauces. I was at the grocery store yesterday getting ingredients for the dessert I made last night and I happened upon a display of Patak's curry sauces. After reading all the labels I settled on the Butter Chicken sauce. I've used the Tikka Masala before and I really like it. So I thought I'd try something new. And it was easy. Cook up some chicken. Add some sauce. Simmer. Eat. Delicious. I definitely don't find any problem with making cooking easy with prepared foods.

After eating my curry, I tried the S'mores Cookie Bars that I made. I found the recipe on one of my favorite food blogs. Mel's Kitchen Cafe has lots of delicious looking recipes. I am excited to try more of them. I haven't quite decided how I liked them. For sure I didn't put enough chocolate chips in, and I think I should have used more marshmallow too, but really they were just very, very sweet and I'm not sure how I felt about that. I brought some of them to work and my coworkers seemed to like them. I think I will have to make them again one day so that I can form a better opinion of them.

Indian Curries from Scotland

Last time I visited my local Macey's I picked up a bottle of chicken tikka masala paste. my next door neighbor had made it a month or so prior and I felt that it was delicious enough for me to give it a go. At length I finally got around to defrosting my chicken and marinating it. I found it quite amusing that on the bottle of curry paste it says to marinate the chicken for "an hour or overnight." Apparently if you marinate for some length of time between one hour and twenty-four then it won't work. I decided to defy the directions and I marinated the chicken for something like five hours. The chicken tikka masala turned out quite well. I was glad, though next time I think I'll use a little less yogurt and a little more of the paste, it wasn't quite as picante as I might have liked.As it turns out, chicken tikka masala isn't really an Indian dish at all. According to legend it was it was conceived in a Bangladeshi restaurant in Glasgow in the '60s. While that can be neither confirmed nor denied it does appear that it originated in the British Isles. Though the article that I read mentioned that it's popularity has broadened and that it is even served in restaurants in India now. Which I think is quite comendable.

No matter that origins of the delicious dish I still think that it is delicious. And I am quite proud of this delightful tikka masala paste in a jar.