Butter Chicken

Had to try this. Greasy, orange chicken. Spices, tomatoes and lots of butter. Give it a try!

Ingredients are not too hard to find. Except for some of the spices, but I'm sure you'll be able to find them in any (good) supermarket.

What you need:

• Time: marinating takes about two hours. The rest goes quick.
• Chicken (half a kilo should do)
• 1 lime
• 1 chili
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Ginger
• 2 or 3 onions
• Optional: almonds
• Some oil for frying
• Tomato paste (a little can will do)
• 1 can of tomatoes
• Some chicken stock (just add one of those little blocks to boiling water)
• 3 tablespoons of butter
• 2 cups of fresh yoghurt or creme fraiche

Spices:

• Some cloves - gives great taste
• Some bay leaves
• Cardamom
• Coriander
• Cumin
• Tumeric

1. Chop chilis (as small as possible), then marinate the chicken in it and add lime juice. Add some salt. Set aside for an hour.

2. Meanwhile, chop up the onions, ginger and garlic and set aside.

3. Grind together spices. If you want to be fancy about it, grind whole cloves, cardamom seeds with pestle and mortar. Take about a teaspoon of each. Powder of each spice can be easily found.

4. Add yogurt to spice mix. Stir.

5. Add yogurt mix to the chicken. Let marinate for another hour.

6. Oil frying pan and heat it up.

7. Remove the chicken from yogurt mix, and fry along with onions, ginger, and garlic.

8. Chicken should be getting cooked, pinkish white, maybe a little fried already.

9. With a magic stick, whiz together can of tomatoes and puree. Set aside.

10. Boil about half a liter of water and add stock cube.

11. Add everything you've got the frying pan. That is (1) left over yogurt spice mix, (2) tomato puree.

12. Let heat on, until the tomatoe-y stuff around the chicken halves.

13. Melt butter and pour over chicken.

Not the trickiest thing in the world. There are some experimental fumigation techniques of the butter chicken. Supposedly very traditional. Check it out. Involves coal, aluminium foil. The cloves and cinnamon add a great touch to the tomato sauce. Cinnamon sticks can also be used, but they are harder to find.

Tip: Remove the onions, garlic and ginger when frying the chicken. They almost got a little too dark for my liking when I was frying the chicken.