Hey - we use that recipe, though we got it from another source. I’ve made some alterations that (IMHO) improve it greatly. Firstly, there’s way WAY too much salt called for. I omit it completely from the marinade and add just a teaspoon or two into the sauce. Secondly, the marinade as written is too thick and goopy, depending on the type of yogurt you use, so I add a little water to thin it out. Oh, and thighs taste much better than breasts. To cook the chicken, I can’t be bothered to mess with the skewers and BBQ, so I lay out the chicken pieces on a wire rack over a baking sheet with a lip (to catch juices) and throw it under the broiler for about 5 min per side. Finally, we like lots of sauce for mopping up with naan, so I double the sauce recipe.
It may not be authentic or fancy or gourmet or whatever, but it’s damn tasty.
Here’s an easy one, although it’s probably not authentic. Seperate the parts of a whole chicken or just use the pieces you like. Boned or whole, skin off or on, doesn’t matter much. Melt some butter over low heat in a pot large enough to hold the chicken you are going to make. Add 4 tbsps curry powder per pound of chicken. Heat the curry powder to darken it a little and bring out the flavor. Brown the chicken lightly in the curry/butter, along with a chopped up onion. Add 1/2 cup of water, cover and simmer over low heat until done. Probably around an hour. Or transfer to a crock pot and leave it on low all day. Serve over your favorite rice.
When I’m too lazy to measure my own spices I’ll use Kitchen Guru- a sort of pre-packaged recipe kit with a spice mix to which you add meat, veg and a few other bits.
Any of Madhur Jaffrey’s cookbooks are great. She switches between authentic and Anglicized, and includes wonderful adaptations of her childhood recipes made current for Westerners - such as, from memory, a traditional dish she now makes quickly with pork sausages for a rapid after school meal for her kids.
My mother, an actual Indian person, and a fantastic cook, to boot, swears by Madhur Jaffrey’s books. She only learned Marathi cooking growing up, and my stepdad is Punjabi, so she had to teach herself to cook Punjabi dishes.
In my not so humble opinion - I’ve eaten Indian food in a thousand homes and restaurants on four continents, so I know of what I speak - turmeric is the key to Indian cooking. Well, Marathi/Gujarati cooking, at least.
Chicken tikka masala is to Indian food what the Gordita is to Mexican food - but it’s delicious.
I would second/third/fourth the Jaffrey suggestion.
In my experience, the two most important spices for your curry base are coriander seeds and cumin. And then mustard seeds or turmeric.
Here’s a decent collection of various masalas that are used as spice bases in Indian cooking. I’m a little surprised at the turmeric-being-key comment–but I can’t claim the same experience as Really Not All That Bright. I do a good number of events for the Gujarati/Rajaistani/Punajbi community here in Chicago, and it never really seemed to me that turmeric particularly stood out, and a lot of dishes don’t even have turmeric.
I’d pick cumin as my idea of the “signature” Indian flavor, but that’s probably a reflection of different regional experiences.
I’m eternally grateful to Idi Amin for my early exposure to Indian food. When that assclown expelled the Asians from Uganda, the village where I lived had a recently closed army base that was used as a relocation place for some of the refugees. Various local families were paired off through the Church with refugee families, and I was babysat a lot by this wonderful Indian woman who I would watch cook and she would give me, aged 3 or 4, tastes of everything she would make.
We cut down on the salt also. The yogurt we use works okay. Thighs may well be a good substitution - we normally use thighs for Indian recipes, but use breast for this one because I think they grill better. I think you are missing out by broiling rather than grilling. The charring caused by grilling really adds to the flavor.
We follow the recipe for 4 for two of us, so plenty of everything!
I’ve tried it both ways, and don’t really notice a difference. I let it broil until the chicken begins to blacken slightly, then flip it and go again to the same point, so there some charring there for flavor. YMMV, of course.