Indian Dinner!

I love Indian food and it's the one cuisine I haven't ventured to cook myself yet. I have wanted Nick to try my favorite Indian restaurant for ages now and he's just not interested. So, I decided to try the same tactic I took against him with Thai, Japanese and Chinese food. I made it myself at home and of course he loved it. :-) Oh, and he had no idea what it was until his plate was licked clean. When I told him it was Indian, he looked a bit shocked. See, cooking can be fun!

Anyway....

There's nothing easier than tossing a bunch of ingredients into your crockpot and letting it do all the work, so that's what I did. :-)

Today's main course was Chicken Makhani (Indian Butter Chicken). I've had this in a restaurant and it's very good, plus one of the milder dishes you can get which is good too. Indian food is quite spicy!!

This recipe was taken from the A Year of Slow Cooking crockpot site.

Ingredients

2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs

1 onion, sliced

6 garlic cloves, chopped

4 T butter

15 cardamom pods sewn together (I used 1 tsp of cardamom powder instead. Way easier! If you decide to use pods, go to the link for the original recipe for directions on how to do that)

2 tsp curry

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tsp garam masala

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1 can coconut milk

1 can (6 oz) tomato paste

2 T lemon juice

1 cup plain yogurt (to add at the end, I used fat free)

The Directions.

Use a 5 quart or larger crockpot. Put chicken in crockpot, and add onion, garlic, and all of the dry spices. The spices all smell wonderful!!

Plop in the butter and tomato paste. Add lemon juice and coconut milk.



Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, or high for 4. The chicken should shred easily with 2 forks when fully cooked.

Stir in plain yogurt 15 minutes before serving.



Salt to taste, serve with white or brown basmati rice.

I like keeping with a theme for any special ethnic meals, but I didn't have too much time to plan ahead today. Next time, in addition to a main dish like this, I want to do an Indian salad and dessert. Tonight we had a spinach salad along with the chicken makhani because this dish just doesn't have many veggies in it.