Category: Treats

I set out on an adventure to make my own Tikka Masala earlier this year, and have been getting requests from folks smelling it to get the recipe.

First….

The Marinade. This is fairly standard from any recipe you’ll look up.

1 cup Plain Yogurt
2 TBS Lemon Juice
1 TBS Garam Masala
2 tsp Cumin
2 tsp Ceyenne pepper
2 tsp black pepper
2 tsp ginger

Mix that up and marinate your chicken for several hours. I like to get it going first thing in the morning. Now, I’m always using 2 lbs of frozen chicken, and as it thaws, it naturally thins out that marinade, so if yours is more fresh or pre-thawed, you might want to thin it a bit with some water.

Once ready, take that chicken and cook it on the grill. You don’t want to really char the chicken, just cooked all the way through. Then dice it up and set aside. I assume you could even do this a day in advance if you wanted.

PART II

The Sauce. This is where we go a little off the standard. Most recipes, first of all, don’t have enough sauce for our taste.

~2 TBS butter
1/2 onion minced
3 cloves garlic

Sautee the onion and garlic in the butter.

Add a quart of tomato sauce. If you haven’t seen, my homemade sauce makes a fantastic starting point. I’ve come to like the Kirkland brand as an alternative as well.

Stir well, then stir in the following:

2 TBS Garam Masala
1 TBS Cumin
2 tsp Coriander
2 tsp Curry Powder
1 tsp paprika

Bring to a simmer for 5 minutes, then add…
*Sriracha to taste*
The precooked chicken. Stir well and bring back to a simmer.

Stir in 1-2 cups of cream while simmering, to get the desired consistency you want.

Serve with rice.

You can easily make your own naan by using some Rhodes roll dough, just let it rise and punch it down into the shape and bake per package directions.

Things have been difficult so far this year. It’s time to get back into the swing of things. While I have some of the regularly scheduled insanity on the way, I first have a slew of recipes to get out of the way.

First being our own tomato sauce, since most the recipes to follow will utilize it.

This is an easy, if time consuming recipe.

25 lbs tomatoes. Personally, I like Roma. We grew about half our own last year, hoping to do better than that this year.

Just wash and quarter those and throw them into a nice big stock pot with the following:

1 cup of olive oil
3\4 cup of red wine
1\3 cup of herbs. You can use what you like, We used Rosemary and Basil in ours.
Head of garlic, broken into cloves
2 large bell peppers
1 large onion
Couple of Bay Leaves

Take a potato masher and just crush all that together, then bring it to a boil and simmer it down until a good amount of the juice is gone. The house will smell divine.

Now, if you want to be all traditional like you can run this mixture through a tomato strainer…personally…god made blenders to make such jobs easier. So, strain or blender it into a separate bowl.

Once it’s all strained/blendered simmer some more if you are too runny, or can/preserve it via your most comfortable method.

There you have a fantastic base to make into pasta, pizza, or other sauce.

As long time readers know, cooking, for me, is yet another hobby of mine.

Most of the time I’ll just throw something together it’ll be ‘good’, and we’ll move on.

And, I rarely get to eat Chinese food around here, as my wife doesn’t tend to like it much. Fortunately she works often, and I’ve been circling in on a favored dish of mine for quite some time: General Tso’s chicken. Now, I’m SURE there are loads of recipes for this online, but what’s the fun in THAT? It’s been trial and error.

The other night, I had a bad day, and she was home. I told her I wanted to experiment, and she agreed. Intent on bringing it all together at last, I was frustrated to find some of the key ingredients had been lost due to a recent fridge failure incident. SO…I made due….and came up with something even better. When the boss said ‘you need to write that one down’, I knew we were on to something special. So, this weekend, we made a final batch, fixing the few mistakes we made last time.

So, here it is, some kind of bastard cross between General Tso’s and Orange Chicken.

The Sauce:

1 1/2 Cup Chili Sauce (Ketchup will work as well)
1/4 Cup Orange Juice (add this last, little less/more to taste)
1/2 Cup Soy Sauce
1/4 Cup Red Wine Vinegar
1/3 Cup Sugar
2/3 Cup Brown Sugar
2 cloves Garlic, minced
pepper sauce to taste*(I like Cholula brand, about 2 TBS (Tobasco, etc))
1 TBSP Rosemary
1 1/2 tsp Ginger
Pepper to taste
3 TBSP Corn starch

Throw that all in a sauce pan and simmer until thickened to the desired consistency.
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The Chicken:

Cube a bunch of boneless/skinless chicken breasts. Take a bit of that sauce above (about 1/3 or enough to cover) and marinade that chicken for 2-24 hours.

In a baggie, mix:
3 cups Flour
2 TBSP Curry powder
2 tsp pepper

Take that marinaded chicken and dunk it in the flour mixture, and spread out onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 400 for 10-15 minutes, until cooked.

Now, transfer that to a pan/wok sprayed with pam, and stirfry with your favorite veggies. Pour the rest of the sauce over the top, and serve.