NEWSPAPER ARTICLE I AM WRITING

This is an article I'm writing about the history of INDIAN BUTTER CHICKEN. This is just the beginning of the article for an Asian newspaper.

Butter chicken or Murgh Makhani is an Indian dish, popular all over the world. The origins of butter chicken can be traced back to Delhi, during the period of the Mughal Empire. The recipe seems to be invented by a person working in the kitchen of the restaurant called ‘Moti Mahal’ located in Daryaganj, the central region of Delhi, called Murg Makhani in Hindi, butter chicken originated in the 1950’s at the Moti Mahal restaurant in old Delhi, famed for its tandoori chicken (tandoori chicken is essentially a restaurant dish and not a home-style dish, because there are no tandoors in Indian domestic kitchens), the cooks there used to recycle the leftover chicken juices in the marinade with the tandoor-cooked chicken pieces and presto-butter chicken was born! The left over dish appealed to Delhites and was quickly lapped up by the rest of the world.

So impressed was India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru by Kundal Lal’s dishes that Moti Mahal became a permanent fixture in all his state banquets. Legend has it that when former Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev was asked what he liked about India, he replied, “Taj Mahal and Moti Mahal”. When the Shah of Iran came on a state visit to India, the Indian Education Minister, Maulana Azad told him that coming to Delhi without eating at Moti Mahal was like going to Agra and not seeing the Taj Mahal.

After Nehru, his daughter and then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, continued the relationship with Moti Mahal. So fascinated was she by the food that at the wedding of her younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, Moti Mahal specialties dominated the wedding function dinner.

Dressed chicken is marinated overnight in a yogurt and spice mixture and then grilled, roasted or pan fried. Makhani, the sauce, is made by heating and mixing butter, tomato puree, and various other spices with some fresh cream and cashew paste.

Once the sauce is prepared, the prepared chicken is cooked till the gravy and chicken have blended. While the dish’s general recipe is well known, the actual flavors can vary from recipe to recipe, and restaurant to restaurant even within India. Butter chicken is usually served with naan, roti, parathas or steamed rice.

Today, eating butter chicken in the Moti Mahal is like reading Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The play’s dialogues have lent so many popular phrases to the English language that if you read Hamlet for the first time, you feel you have read it before. In the same way, having Moti Mahal’s butter chicken for the first time in your life may give rise to the déjà vu feeling!

It tastes slightly sweet and the sauce percolates so deeply into the chicken pieces that they become juicy and soft, instantly melting in your mouth. The dish is so extravagantly buttery, that, to a calorie-conscious dinner, it may seem as gross as the showiness of nouveau rich Delhites. The butter chicken is so addictive it is difficult to stop from licking all the gravy off the plate.

Indian cuisine is about as easy to explain as the universe. Over 5000 years of history. India has welcomed a multitude of settlers with a variety of belief systems. In order to understand the evolution of the indigenous cuisine of India, one must realize this country is anything but homogenous. Regions and religions make up a large portion of the cultural fabrics of the food. “Indian food” has been coined a phrase that a native would surely laugh at because such a phrase would be like saying to a sommelier “Australian wine”. Like the Barrosa Valley, Margret River, and the Hunter Valley, for example, there are many areas within India that have its own unique cooking methods, spices, and local ingredients. Tipping the population scale at over 1 billion, the diversity of its food is as diverse as its people.

Hindu and Muslim are the two dominate religions that have influenced Indian cooking and food habits the most. With each migration of settlers, they brought with them their own culinary methods. The Hindu vegetarian culture is widely practiced. Adversely, Muslim tradition is the most dominate in the cooking of meats. Mughlai food, kabaas, rich kormas (curry), and nargisi, kaftas (meatballs), the biryani (a layered rice and meat dish), rogan josh, and favorite dishes prepared in a clay oven or tandoor are wonderful contributions made by Muslim settlers in India. In Southern India, the cuisine is largely rice based with an accent of thin soup called Rasam.

Coconut is an important ingredient in all South Indian cuisine. Dasa (rice pancakes), Idli (steamed rice cakes), and fermented rice are very popular dishes with Hindu vegetarians.

The Portuguese, Persians, and British made important contributions to the Indian culinary scene as well. The British, for example, introduced tea or ‘chai’ to India and it is the favorite drink of most Indians today.

North, East, South and West are the four different main regional styles in Indian cooking; North India was influenced by the Moghul dynasty that ruled India for 3 centuries until the British replaced them in the 1800’s. Saffron and rich gravies made of pureed nuts and creams were all derived from the Moghuls. Naan bread, which is made in a tandoor, is not indigenously Indian.