Butter Chicken

(Recipe taken from Everyday Cooking for Every Family)

So I’ll start off by saying that I thought I’d try to be a little bit smart here when I realised that I was 50g short of cashews. I couldn’t be bothered heading out to buy some more but I didn’t want the curry to be too watery, so I added 30g of flour.

Don’t do that.

When I make curries or stews in the Thermomix, I always leave it in the fridge for at least a day (sometimes 2) so that the flavours can develop. What I realised the following day was that the addition of flour had left me with a slightly claggy sauce, and while the taste was still fine, the gravy wasn’t as creamy as it should have been.

Oh well, live and learn.

Ingredients

1 tbsp cumin seeds

1 tbsp fennel seeds

2 cloves garlic

2cm piece ginger, peeled

1 large onion, peeled & quartered

100g butter

20g olive oil

4 ripe Roma tomatoes, chopped

150g raw cashew nuts

100g water

680g chicken breast, diced into 2cm cubes

200g cream

1 tsp garam masala (you can make this in the TMX, but I was too lazy to de-seed cardamom pods so I got my garam masala from the store)

1tsp turmeric powder

1/2 tsp salt to taste

Method

• Place cumin and fennel into the bowl and dry roast for 2 minutes/100 degrees/speed 1.

• Mill spices for 2 minutes/speed 8. Set aside.

• Place garlic, ginger and onion into bowl and chop for 5 seconds/speed 7.
• Add butter and oil and cook for 3 minutes/100 degrees/speed 1.

• Add tomatoes, cashews and water into bowl, puree for 1 minute/speed 8.

• Add all remaining ingredients, except for 1 dessert spoon of the cumin and fennel mix.

• Cook for 20-25 minutes/100 degrees/Reverse/speed soft.
• Add one extra cube of butter at the end of cooking plus the remaining cumin and fennel mix and some extra garam masala. Serve with naan bread, rice and/or pratha.