The Wine-Drunk Italian Chef, Vol. 4

Welcome back to the kitchen of the Wine-Drunk Italian Chef! Itsa me, Chez Provencio, and I’m excited to share my recipe for Butter Chicken Curry. Also known as Murgh Makhani (chicken with butter), if you’re familiar with the proper name for this dish in India. Bet you didn’t know I cooked more than just Italian, eh?

I like to think I’m a well-rounded chef. No, that’s not a fat joke, though it could be construed as fairly accurate. I enjoy being somewhat of a foodie, and as the name of this series would indicate, I do enjoy the vino while I’m cooking. Let’s talk about this awesome curry dish.

This recipe ended up not nearly as difficult to make as I thought it might be. When I’m cooking something new that’s outside of my wheelhouse meals that I know by memory, it can be a little nerve-wracking. Nobody wants to fuck up dinner and then have to order a pizza when things go horribly wrong. Marone!

I’ve always said, “If you can read, you can cook.” Ladies with the sexist husbands, don’t let them use this bullshit excuse on you. Even if he works all day, so do you. Be it at home or at your job. Making dinner should not land squarely on you. You can tell him I said so.

If you live in a household like mine, however, perhaps he’s the one doing the cooking most nights. I love it. Cooking is one of my favorite things to do, besides writing, betting ponies, or a good, well-thought-out heist. Shhhhh, you don’t know nothin’ about nothin’. Capische?

Ok, back to this delectable recipe. Two of my three kids found this one and made it together a couple of times without me. I give credit to The Boy (Kazden, for those who don’t know him well enough to call him “The Boy”) and my daughter who loves to cook, Avery. They did great on this one.

Now that The Boy is six hours away at college, it lands on me and Ave to make this awesome Indian recipe happen. The first step is to marinade the chicken either overnight or for a few hours. Even doing this the same day as we make it gives it an awesome flavor to start us off.

For the chicken marinade:

28 oz (800g) boneless and skinless chicken thighs or breasts cut into bite-sized pieces

1/2 cup plain yogurt

1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic

1 tablespoon minced ginger (or finely grated)

2 teaspoons garam masala

1 teaspoon turmeric

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon red chili powder

1 teaspoon of salt

The recipe for the marinade calls for these ingredients. I did modify it a bit though because we like our food spicy. I received the go-ahead from my partner in the kitchen and favorite co-chef, Avery. She agreed that we could spice this up a bit, as their previous attempts at making this dish ended up a bit on the bland side.

I ask Lefty-Pro to use her southpaw stance to chop the chicken into bite-sized chunks. I’d have done it myself, but my Bride and I just finished up the Dahmer series on Netflix, so I’m still a bit off from that. Better to have my junior partner here take control of the big scary knife.

She may or may not have called me a buchiach, and I may or may not have agreed with that assessment, but the job gets done regardless. We mix the raw chicken in a bowl with half a cup of plain yogurt, minced garlic, and the rest of the spices.

The modification comes in the form of adding some paprika, cayenne powder, and bold creole seasoning. Add however much you feel like adding to achieve the level of spiciness you prefer. I always say, “Bring the heat.”

Back to the lesson at hand. Once all of the chicken pieces have been seared for 3 minutes on each side, they’re placed into a bowl. They’ll more fully cook once they’re in the sauce. Speaking of which, let’s talk about this sauce.

For the sauce:

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons ghee (or 1 tbs butter + 1 tbs oil)

1 large onion, sliced or chopped

1 1/2 tablespoons garlic, minced

1 tablespoon ginger, minced or finely grated

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin

1 1/2 teaspoons garam masala

1 teaspoon ground coriander

14 oz (400 g) crushed tomatoes

1 teaspoon red chili powder (adjust to your taste preference)

1 1/4 teaspoons salt (or to taste)

1 cup of heavy or thickened cream (or evaporated milk to save calories)

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon kasoori methi (or dried fenugreek leaves)

After chopping up plenty of onions, we’ll put them back into the same pan that we had seared the chicken pieces in. Be sure to scrape up any tiny bits that may have gotten burned.

A recipe is not as good when it tastes like an arson. Once the onions have cooked a bit and have started to sweat, add the garlic and ginger next for about a minute or until they turn fragrant.

See, now this kitchen is starting to smell nice. Frying up onions and garlic always does the trick, at least in this wine-drunk Italian chef’s home. I refill the vino and it’s time to continue. Salud, to your health.

We next add crushed tomatoes, chili powder, and salt. Because we enjoy our food spicy, we once again add a few hotter spices of our choosing. Then we let this simmer for about 10–15 minutes, stirring occasionally until the sauce thickens and becomes a deep orangish color.

Avery says that this is the part where we leave no witnesses. I decide to man up and power through this portion of the recipe, Dahmer be damned. I grab a blender and we pour the sauce into it. The whirring of the ingredients as the blades do their job is both soothing and reassuring for some reason.

Next, we pour the puréed sauce back into the pan. Stir in the cream, sugar, and crushed kasoori methi (or fenugreek leaves) through the sauce. Next, add the chicken with juices back into the pan and cook for an additional 8–10 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce is thick and bubbling.

We need to make some rice for this Indian masterpiece to go over. Most people would be satisfied to throw a cup and a half or two of white rice in the rice cooker and call it a day. Well, for some people, maybe. We’re not most people. We’re chefs, we do this shit better than that.

Avery seconds my motion to put some garlic and olive oil on the stove in a larger frying pan. Two larger scoops of garlic, slightly browned, does the trick. We then chop up some green onions. Once the rice is done in the rice cooker, we dump it all into the garlicky oil, add the green onions and a bit of course salt, and stir that shit up thoroughly.

It should come out looking a little like this:

At this stage, the only thing left to do is heat up a little bit of Naan bread. You can buy this at your local grocery store, or from a smaller store that carries international foods if you have one nearby. We only had to heat this up for a few minutes.

Well, thatsa all for Volume 4 of the Wine-Drunk Italian Chef. Though we deviated from our typical Italian dishes, I feel that you and your family will really enjoy this Middle Eastern recipe.

Remember, feel free to spice both the chicken and the sauce to whichever level of heat you and yours prefer. Even with adding additional hotter spices to both, this still only came out lower to medium level on spiciness. Avery and I plan to up the ante and go all in on even more heat next time.

Hopefully, we’ll see our dinner guests sweating a little like you would during a two-hour interrogation. Remember though, we never rat on the family. Fuhgeddaboutit! &:^)