If you ask for an Indian recipe there is a good chance, at least in the West, that tikka masala will be at the top of the list. A dish based on chicken meat and a creamy sauce of tomato and spices that is not usually lacking in Indian restaurants and that, due to its mild flavor, is suitable for almost all palates. What is less known is that it is actually a relatively new preparation and that there are many theories that the dish does not originate in India, but was created in the United Kingdom.
After the initial shock, in reality it is not something so rare in the history of gastronomy. It is known that the Bolognese sauce is not native to Bologna. Or that, to continue with the so often mistreated Italian cuisine outside its borders, those spaghetti with meatballs that in the United States are considered a genuinely Italian dish, in Italy taste just as good as a paella with chorizo ??in Valencia.
So wondering about the authentic origin of chicken tikka masala is not at all strange. More taking into account the colonial history and the subsequent relationship of the country with the United Kingdom, the Indian and Pakistani community that has lived there for years and the number of Indian restaurants spread throughout the country.
In fact, there are those who do not hesitate to say that tikka masala is the national dish of the United Kingdom. This is how Robin Cook, a Labor deputy and secretary of foreign affairs, defined it in a 2001 speech in which he pointed out this recipe as a flag of the country’s multiculturalism.
But are we facing a kind of rice three delights? A dish for European palates that we will never see in the house or restaurant of the country from which it is supposed to originate? Not so much either, they tell us from the Casa Masala restaurant. “Today, tikka masala is also a well-known dish in India,” says Gurmeet Singh, chef there.
That “also” is not a minor detail, as if the dish had actually made the reverse journey to what many assumed, becoming popular in India after succeeding in the United Kingdom. And it is that the British passion for tikka masala -literally, meat with a mixture of spices- is not just a myth.
This is confirmed by the sales figures for prepared food in the main supermarket chains in the country. According to data from Sainsbury’s, it sells 1.6 million prepared tikka masala dishes annually, making it the favorite of the English when it comes to taking food ready to heat up at home.
The roots in Spain are much less, but they also like it. “It is the best-selling dish, without a doubt,” confirms Jordi Arós, chef and co-owner of Casa Masala. The recipe? “We prepare it starting with a good stir-fry based on garlic, ginger, coriander seeds, cumin, onion and tomato. We cook it for hours over a very low heat together with a selection of spices roasted and ground in the restaurant itself. Finally we added grated coconut, coconut milk and almonds”.
Like so many popular dishes, there is no canonical formula. In fact, the name itself already leaves room for each house to prepare it in a different way because “masala” is a combination of spices, basic in traditional Indian cooking and that admits infinite possible mixtures.
But going back to the origin of this dish, as with so many recipes, there are various theories in this regard that discuss the Indian or British nationality of tikka masala. There is no consensus, but the truth is that the former win by a majority and today it is taken for granted that this recipe is an adaptation of the Indian butter chicken, replacing the original curry with a milder sauce.
“Chicken tikka masala is eaten a lot in India, but not as much as butter chicken, which is a very similar dish based on spices, tomato and butter, originally from Punjab”, explains Singh, a native of this Indian region.
Among all the stories surrounding the recipe and its possible origin, there is one that is always explained and that, once again, certifies that in the United Kingdom it feels like its own dish. More specifically in Scotland where, in 2009, a deputy registered a request for the European Parliament to recognize tikka masala as a dish originating from Glasgow and to create a quality seal to protect that identity.
Although the proposal did not prosper and may sound somewhat surreal, in reality this Scottish city is for many the cradle of chicken tikka masala. Ali Ahmed Aslam, chef and owner of the Shish Mahal restaurant, is credited by many as the inventor of this dish.
The story goes that when a customer complained about a chicken cooked in a tandoor oven that was too dry, he came up with the idea of ??improvising a sauce combining a traditional curry with tomato soup. It was the 70s and the success was such that that dish, Aslam -who passed away at the end of last year- and his restaurant became an indisputable part of the history of Indian cuisine.
Although it is the most widespread theory, it is not the only one. Some historians recall that in the book Indian Cookery -considered one of the obligatory references to Indian cuisine in recent decades- its author, Balbir Singh, already mentioned in 1961 a recipe such as tikka masala, although he does not use that same name.
The mystery surrounding its creation together with the innumerable ways of cooking it are already part of the appeal of what is undoubtedly the most international Indian dish. Whether or not he originates from India.
