Indian Butter Chicken, by Way of Australia
Butter chicken is the General Tso’s of Indian food, a great, ever-evolving, cross-continental dish found in Delhi, London, New York, Perth and most points in between. In its purest form, it is yogurt-and-spice-marinated chicken dressed in a velvety red bath comprising butter, onions, ginger and tomatoes, scented with garam masala, cumin and turmeric, with a cinnamon tang.
In restaurants, where the chicken is often cooked in a tandoor oven before being added to the sauce, giving it a deep, caramelized flavor, the dish can be opulent. In most homes, where no such ovens exist, the chicken goes straight into the gravy to cook through. The result is still wildly luxurious. Serve with basmati rice and mango chutney, with papadums or naan if you can find them, with extra rice if you cannot.
The version under our microscope today is the one made by a young cook known only as Amandeep, and called Sunny by his colleagues, for staff meals at the restaurant Attica, in Melbourne, Australia. The photographer Per-Anders Jorgensen put the dish in a recent collection of his photographs of top restaurants around the world, “Eating With the Chefs,” published by Phaidon Press. I started cooking it myself soon after, and found I could not stop.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/magazine/indian-butter-chicken-by-way-of-australia.html?mabReward=RI%3A5&action=click&pgtype=Homepage®ion=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine