Chicken tikka masala recipe

Chicken tikka masala 

So I promised a Chicken Tikka Masala recipe during my first Ourique post and then completely forgot to publish it. D'oh! Here goes ...

This is my interpretation of a recipe by +Elaine Lemm - her original recipe is here but I had to amend a few bits to suit what we can find locally in Portugal. Dave doesn't like food too spicy so I reduced the chilli making this version less hot than would probably be served in a UK restaurant. Plus life is too short to zest a lime and I always ending up grating my knuckle instead!

There appears to be an almost total dearth of Indian restaurants in Alentejo. You need to travel right down south to the Algarve (and all the holidaying Brits) to find one. Strangely, there are Chinese-run shops in practically every town but hardly any Chinese restaurants either. 


Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts, diced (or enough for 2 people)
1 tsp ground ginger
1 garlic clove, finely diced
salt & black pepper
1 tsp ground coriander
juice of half a lime
olive oil
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1 small onion, finely diced
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin seeds
200ml double cream
2 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp lemon juice

Put the diced chicken in a bowl with the ginger, garlic, salt, pepper, coriander, lime and 1 tsp olive oil. Mix well, cover and leave to marinate for as long as possible. We left ours for about ten hours in the fridge.
When ready to begin cooking, heat more oil in a saucepan and brown the chicken pieces.
Remove the chicken from the pan, lower the heat and fry the onion with the chilli powder until the onion is soft.
Add turmeric and cumin and cook for one minute. I used whole cumin seeds because we didn't have any ground cumin.
Add cream and cook for five minutes. Pingo Doce sells cream differently to what we find in the UK. I used a 200ml carton of cooking cream which most closely resembles double cream. I think you could use plain yoghurt instead.
Return chicken to the pan and cook for five minutes.
Add tomato puree and lemon juice and cook for one minute.
Check chicken is piping hot, then serve immediately with rice.

Interestingly (or not), 'tikka' in Finnish means 'woodpecker'.