Mmm...Indian Food...

So, once upon a time I blogged about how much I adore Indian food. Because I do adore Indian food. I love Indian food so much that I hope when I die, heaven is actually just an Indian buffet that is all-you-can-eat and you never get full.

That being said, however, I've really been wanting to make Indian food in the meantime (before my all you can eat Indian buffet heaven plans). :) While I have always been a huge fan of Indian food, the budget is a bit tighter now and a typical Indian restaurant trip usually runs us in the $40 range once you figure in all the delicious appetizers!

So when I came across this recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala (aka my favorite Indian dish!) on AllRecipes, I knew I HAD to try it.

It sat in my recipe box for a while (btw, I'm going to take a quick minute to plug AllRecipes. It's awesome. And the recipes are endless. And most of the ones I've made have been delicious! So I suggest that you finish reading this blog and head over to AllRecipes to log in and create your own account!), but I finally decided I really needed to eat Indian food since I don't think I've had anything save my Trader Joe's frozen meals since New Year's Eve. Or maybe February. But that is too long ago.

The one thing I noticed (which surprised me a bit) was that I pretty much had all of the ingredients already: chicken, plain yogurt, lemon juice, cumin, cinnamon, cayenne pepper (okay, well, had to borrow this from the neighbor since ours ran out a few months ago and forgot to replace it, but now it's been replaced!), black pepper, ginger (recipes calls for fresh, I used powdered), salt, butter, garlic (minced), paprika, tomato sauce, jalapeno pepper, heavy cream & cilantro. Aside from the heavy cream & yogurt, most of the ingredients were here or already on our regular grocery list.

The recipe was clear and easy to follow. Aside from using powdered ginger instead of fresh ginger, I didn't really make any modifications. Chicken marinaded in the fridge for about an hour while we ran some errands (including to get some cilantro, since the stuff we'd bought about a week earlier was already gross). Trader Joe's has frozen naan, both plain and garlic, but I decided not to get any this time.

After marinading and soaking the wooden skewers in cold water for about 1/2 hour, we threaded the chicken onto skewers and tossed them on the grill.

While the chicken was on the grill, we started on the cream/tomato sauce. The recipes calls for melted butter and then jalapenos and a whole bunch of spices to be sauteed prior to the cream & tomato sauce being added. Almost burned the butter! but was able to keep it from burning by hurrying up the spices and tossing in the cream. Phew. Crisis averted. The jalapenos and spices combined with the cream & tomato sauces turned into the lovely orange chicken tikka masala sauce that I know and LOVE! :)

I also had a bag of basmati rice so I made sure to cook that up to go along with the meal, especially given that I had passed on the naan.

After the chicken was grilled and the sauce was ready, we added chicken to the sauce & let it simmer for about 10 minutes.

THIS. WAS. AMAZING.

Holy crap and holy crap again. I honestly think this is one of the best dinners we've EVER made and that's saying something as it includes the Sprecher beer cheese soup, the Pioneer Woman mac & cheese, the chicken tortilla soup, the Jamaican jerk chicken and any of Andy's awesome chili. So yeah, I highly recommend this. A lot. And did I mention you should possibly go out and make this tomorrow?

So given that a chicken tikka masala dish at a good Indian restaurant will usually run about $10 (on the low end), and I don't really think this is "healthy" (though it yields 4 servings at 404 calories a pop, so really not as bad as I thought it would be), but I think it fits the "frugal" aspect.

Chicken: 3lbs @1.99/lb = $6

Heavy Cream: 8oz @0.89 = $0.89

Yogurt: large carton = $2.25

Tomato Sauce: 8oz @ ~$1

Cilantro: ~$1

Jalapeno Pepper: ~$0.50

Cumin, Cinnamon, Lemon Juice, Cayenne Pepper, Black Pepper, Salt, Ginger, Butter, Garlic & Paprika, Basmati Rice: Already found in the house. :)

So for the whole dish, it was roughly $11.65. For 4 servings. No tip necessary! :)

Next time, however, I am going to try a few different things to try and make it a bit healthier. The entire recipe as written calls for 7 teaspoons of salt. Uhh...sodium much? A few of the reviews on allrecipes said the salt didn't matter. So I think I'll just do a bit of trial and error with that. The recipe also calls for a tablespoon of butter, but it really was just to saute the jalapeno and spices. I am going to try substituting grapeseed oil for that next time. No risk of me burning then either....

Overall I give the recipe an A+. It tasted pretty similar to my favorite Indian restaurant's chicken tikka masala (though I'm not going to stop frequenting my favorite Indian restaurants because of it). I was really surprised at how relatively easy it was to make, and I was very impressed.

Jamaican Jerk Chicken!

I have had the recipe for Jamaican Jerk Chicken in my "recipe box" on AllRecipes for over two years now and just haven't gotten around to making it! However, I decided a few weeks ago that I really wanted to make it since we were at the Brewers game instead of going to Rhythm & Brews when they had their "Jerk" night a few weeks ago.

So, without further ado, Jamaican Jerk Chicken!

The recipe calls for 4 limes (juiced) and a cup of water to put the chicken in. We used 5 limes since a- we have a lot of limes leftover from our Memorial Day BBQ where the featured drink was gin & tonic, and b- we don't have juicer and I don't think squeezing the limes by hand maximizes the amount of lime juice...

The rest of the marinade was made up of allspice, nutmeg, salt, brown sugar, thyme, ground pepper, and ginger. It also called for vegetable oil, but I substituted Natural Grapeseed Oil instead since I have almost a whole bottle of it that I've only used twice. The recipe called for ground allspice, but I only have the whole allspice, but since it gets put in the blender I hardly think it really matters. Blended all that together and then added the chopped onion, chopped green onion, 6 cloves of garlic, and the peppers. The recipe called for habanero peppers but we used jalapeno and serrano peppers instead since habaneros are hella hot! After all that was blended together, it was added to the chicken/lime juice/water and marinaded in the fridge for two hours.

This chicken went on the grill after it was marinaded and only took about 15-20 minutes to grill thoroughly. There was a little marinade leftover so that it could be used to baste the chicken on the grill.

Finally, we served it with a side of basmati rice, since that's what we had in the house, when we make it again I'll probably use a more authentic side such as red beans and rice or anything from Zatarain's. :)

Overall, a great dish. Easy to prepare and easy to cook. Prep time was pretty accurate on the recipe, it took about 20 minutes to prep everything before going into the fridge. 221 calories per serving (about 5 WW points) not including the rice. Even without the habanero peppers, there was a bit of spice in the dish, but nothing outrageous (I can't imagine how hot it would have been with the habaneros, though!). Fun to make, and perfect for a summer day!