Source:
https://scmp.com/magazines/style/leisure/article/3022868/fact-check-chicken-tikka-masala-actually-indian-not-british Leisure
Fact check: is chicken tikka masala actually Indian, not British?
While Britain may lay claim to chicken tikka masala, the dish’s origins can be traced back 5,000 years ago to India, says Ashutosh Bisht, restaurant manager of Bombay Dreams in Hong Kong
Chicken tikka masala is said to have been invented in Britain – but its origins are ancient, and lie in the Indian subcontinent.
We all think we know the story.
The scene: An Indian restaurant in 1960s Britain, not long before closing. Most dishes are already sold out.
The players: A hungry British man and a Bangladeshi chef (at the time, most of Britain's Indian restaurants were owned and run by Bangladeshi chefs.)
The conversation: “Excuse me,” says the man to the chef. “This chicken tikka is a bit dry, can you please bring something else, something better than this.” Wanting to please his customer, the chef returns to the kitchen. Looking around he spies a can of tomato soup and has either a light bulb moment or a moment of desperation. He warms the soup, throws in some spices and a dollop of yogurt and pours it over the chicken.
He presents the dish to his customer, who is thrilled with the result, returning again and again for what is now one of the UK’s most popular dishes, chicken tikka masala.
Or so the legend goes.
The dry chicken and tomato soup tale is, according to Ashutosh Bisht, restaurant manager of Bombay Dreams in Hong Kong, the commonly held belief about the origin of the dish. “It is a story I have heard many times, it is folklore.”
There are a number of variations on the above story, however all agree that its beginnings were accidental improvisation. Only one person has claimed to have known the chef in question.
Asif Ali told the tale on a 2013 episode of British TV cookery programme, Hairy Bikers. His father, Pakistani chef Ali Ahmed Aslam, was the proprietor of the Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow.
“On a typical dark, wet Glasgow night in 1971, a bus driver coming off shift came in and ordered a chicken curry. He sent it back to the waiter, saying it’s dry.” Ali went on to explain that his father was suffering from an ulcer at the time and was consuming a bowl of tomato soup. “To please his guest, he thought, ‘Why not put some tomato soup into the curry with some spices?’ They sent it back to the table and the bus driver absolutely loved it. He and his friends came back again and again and we put it on the menu.”
Chicken tikka masala is one of the most popular curry dishes in the Western world.
The dish today has been refined from its accidental beginning, although there is no one standard recipe.
Bisht says, “It is usually made with yogurt-marinated chicken with traditional spices, chargrilled in the tandoor oven to get the smoky flavour and then cooked in a rich sauce made with fresh onion and tomatoes, finished with butter and cream.”
Satpal Sharma, chef de cuisine, The Chinnery, Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong adds, “It’s a simple dish in terms of flavour, so there has to be a perfect balance between the flavours from all the ingredients. Considering that only a few ingredients are used, the dish can go completely wrong if there is a miss.”
While the dish has only been around since the 1960s, for Bisht, its origins have a much longer history – well, at least the tikka part – and without that, there would be no chicken tikka masala.
Tandoor clay ovens were invented in India 5,000 years ago.
“For the origin of chicken tikka masala, we should first travel to 5,000 years ago when tandoor clay ovens were invented. Next, the small bite-sized pieces, which we now call tikka, that came into existence thanks to the nitpicking of Babur, the founder and first emperor of the Mughal dynasty. He was so sick (or afraid) of choking on chicken bones, he ordered his Punjabi chefs to remove the bones before cooking the meat in the tandoor. The resulting delicacy was called ‘joleh’, Persian for tikka.”
The dish, now served in Indian restaurants around the world, is considered Indian at heart.
“Chicken tikka masala is an Indian dish, even though it’s mostly popular in the Western world. The ingredients and techniques used for cooking the dish all originated from Indian cuisine,” says Sharma.
Where are Singapore noodles from? How are century eggs made? Are French fries improperly named? And what’s the final verdict on where tikka masala was created? With the Origins series, STYLE delves into the often surprising beginnings of iconic dishes or foods, how they’ve evolved over time and the many ways they’re enjoyed today.