Chicken with Indian Spiced Sauce

I love "foreign" food. Even if I didn't grow up eating it, I'm game to try it. With a few exceptions. Like, I won't even try calamari. I did try littleneck clams, steamed and dunked in garlic butter. Once. The texture was...well...a nope for me. I mean, there was butter and garlic involved, so the flavor was fine.

Anyway, I discovered Indian cuisine when I was in Great Britain (also where I discovered that fish tastes totally different if it was caught in the same week that it was cooked and eaten. And that if freezing is involved, it changes the flavor of the fish to something I don't like. This is a whole other issue to the salmon thing.

So. I tried Indian cuisine. And I found that the hotter, not the better, although I apparently can tolerate some pretty hot stuff, I also like flavor to be involved. And it is hard to taste anything when your mouth feels like it's on fire. And while restaurants are fun occasionally, I prefer eating at home, and I live in an area that has not got a lot of different cultural food styles anyway (Chinese, Italian, TexMex, and there is a Japanese Steakhouse and YAY, an Indian restaurant again--run by the son of the guy who had the restaurant when we moved here.) So, I got a recipe book and spice collection so I could learn to cook Indian style food. It's not hard, but you do need a plan to assemble everything. This is one of the easier dishes I've made. It has definitely got some Western influences--I mean, there are potatoes and tomato sauce in it, both things that would have not entered the cuisine until after people brought the plants back from the Americas. Here is a link to some fun facts about tomatoes. :)

http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/tomato-history-and-lore

This dish called for one hot pepper. I used a habanero, but I think it must have been a pretty pathetic pepper as this came out fairly mild. But taste wise, it was over the top. I made it last night and I'm going to have it as leftovers tonight. And probably tomorrow night as well. Also, I'm going to save any sauce left over and use it on chick peas or something. Because, yes, it is THAT GOOD.

Ingredients

1/2 red onion, sliced thin
5 white potatoes, cut in bite size chunks, parboil for about 10 minutes
1 chili pepper, halved, and chopped (I used a habanero, but it is optional. If you don't like the heat, leave it out. The dish will still be quite tasty)
some cilantro, chopped if you are using fresh, I use the already chopped stuff in a tube
6 to 8 chicken thighs cut into smaller pieces (1 1/2 to 2 pounds of chicken. Son asked me to use some breast meat next time as he really doesn't like the dark meat, so I'm going to try that)
1 tablespoon garam masala*
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons butter cut into chunks
15 ounce can tomato sauce
1/2 cup cream
Naan Bread for eating.

Grease a roasting pan. Add parboiled potatoes, onions, chili pepper, and some of the cilantro. Stir. Put the chicken on top of the potato mixture, sprinkle with garam masala, salt, and pepper. Put the butter chunks on top of this, and then dump the tomato sauce over everything so all the chicken is coated with the sauce. Bake at 350 F for about an hour and a half, I put the pan in a cold oven because I forgot to preheat it, and everything came out fine. If you want the bread heated, put it in about fifteen minutes before the chicken is done. Remove the roasting pan from the oven and add the rest of the cilantro and the cream. Stir to make a creamy sauce.

THE Magpie

*Indian spice blend, you can buy it at the supermarket or blend your own. Here is a recipe I found just now.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/142967/easy-garam-masala/ 

PS, I'm trying the linking thing for the first time. If it doesn't do the click on it thing, if you cut and paste the addresses are correct.