Tandoori is Indian!

lonelyaztec

I was watching this program hosted by Vir Sanghvi - a Matter of Taste...where he tried to traced the origin of the Tandoori Chicken.

It seems that when lot of Hindus came to India after Partition in 1947, one enterprising man called 'Kundan Lal', created this new dish called Tandoori chicken. He just fried marinated chicken in a tandoor, and thus started the famous dish.

So, this thing is not from North West Frontier, like what most of us may believe.

The other two new items that were invented along with the Tandoori chicken are
1. Chicken butter masala
2. Chicken tikka masala.

Any more info on this.

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Aztec

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Amyth

Last week, in Hyderabad during the IM meet-up, Scarbobby enlightened us about the origin of Chicken Tikka Masala.
The story goes back to 1950s when a food connoisseur was served rice with chicken tikka in UK. Utterly displeased by the dish, he called for the chef, supposedly a Bangladeshi, and asked him to refurbish the dish to a gravy-centric chicken dish. The chef was a culinary expert and he quickly sautéed some tomatoes with spices and yogurts in it and came up with a delicious gravy (sauce) and added the tikka pieces in it. And the famous Chicken Tikka Masala came into existence, more popular in UK than India, surprising but true!!
Aztec, I have my doubts on Tandoori not being from North West province, it is one of the most popular dishes on the Mughlai Cuisine

GOG

Hi I heard/read that he made the sauce from heinz tomato soup and CTM like Bahjees is a very English thing, people look totally confused if you ask for an onion bahjee.
GOG

phantom

Vir Sanghvi, wrote a very interesting article on this week's "brunch", a magazine that comes with Hindustan Times on sunday. He wrote that its quite amazing that Europeans suffered all the hazards of sea travel and came to india in search of spices but still most of the european cuisine (mostly british) is so bland. He further goes on to say that in 18th century the British cuisine used to be spicy and it took a french culinary revolution that swept europe to remove the traces of spices from the british tables !!

Maybe our European friends could tell us more about it

lonelyaztec

Vir Sanghvi said on 'A matter of Taste' on Travel and Living channel that Tandoori chicken was invented by Kundan Lal in Delhi. He came to India from Pakistan after partition.

Amyth

A twist in the taste !!!

Mickey S

From what I remember of my school days (long, long ago!), spices were an exotic fashion, and also useful for disguising the taste of poor-quality (or rotten) food. They were in huge demand, although much of that demand was speculative. As standards of cuisine rose across the continent (driven mainly by the French), it became more desirable to actually taste the food you were eating and thus the demand for strong spices diminished.

And that remains the case today. European food is certainly not bland, and the vast range of identifiable regional cuisine greatly exceeds that of India, but we still prefer subtle flavours to overpowering ones and tend to use herbs rather more than we do spices. The British, in particular, love Indian food, of course - but we might typically have it once a month compared to the several times a month we eat Italian or other world cuisine.

I have a feeling - and this may be controversial - that as the standard of Indian food and hygiene rises there may be less reason to use spices there too!

Nick-H

Tandoori anything is, surely, that thing cooked in a tandoor? ie a very hot, clay-lined oven.

So whence the tandoor comes, thence tandoori?*

Tandoori Chicken Masala (available in every Chennai non-veg restaurant I visit), according to myth at least, is indeed the work of a British chef in response to a customer who wanted their chicken wet rather than dry.

One thing of which I feel a personal certainty: The person who thought that tandoori means red food colouring chemicals should be shot.

<--- Tandoori rant

<---Tandoori Mad


*I worked hard on that line; hope I got it right. English is a tricky language, even to us English, sometimes

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machadinha

Yep. Tandoor = clay oven. I guess at the time it was invented there was no India nor a North-West Frontier. It's typically associated with what is today the North-West of India though (and the associated region of Pakistan).

Or according to http://www.etymonline.com/ :

Reading up just now it seems it's been known since Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, so there you go. Their own existence contested no doubt.

btw It's full well possible tandoori chicken is a recent invention of course (although dating it to one man in 1947 seems something of a feat, and besides, would no one before have thought of chucking a marinated chicken in there? It's a nice urban legend though.) The origins of ketchup are something of a mystery with several explanations, but it seems to have been related to Malay kecap (soy or fish or really any fermented sauce), possibly misunderstood or adapted by Western sailors who came up with their own relish for those long rides home, and with the tomato having just been introduced from South America and quickly spreading across Asia. I suspect the above Heinz soup and general tomato associations have something to do with this.

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DaDrifter

I always thought the original recipe for Tandoori Chicken and Butter Chicken came from the Moti Mahal restaurant at Darya Ganj in Old Delhi ... used to be a favourite haunt many years ago.

amid

A valiant effort to defend your native cuisine Mickey S although broad generalizations tend to be...broad. Most of the Brits I know are regulars at their local curry take-out and are there at least once a week. I have been in many British pubs where the Indian restaurants upstairs will serve you in the pub! At the same time, 'Westernized' indian food is catered toward Western tastes, and not 'authentic' Indian, but a hybrid.

I would also question the "vast range of identifiable regional cuisine greatly exceeds that of India" comment as well -- first let me say that I really have not been exposed to much variety in Brit/European cuisine, and being vegetarian am likely limited. Indian cuisine does not just vary by North/South demarcations! It varies GREATLY by region, by community, by village even. These differences may be subtle and perhaps less obvious to a less discriminating palate. And use of spices nowadays mostly is a matter of taste; not hygiene!

Mickey S

I certainly wouldn't consider the whole of European cuisine to be my "native" cuisine, nor does European cuisine need defending! I do, however, defend my suggestion that there is a greater range of cuisine in Europe - but that's inevitable considering the much greater range in cultures, climates and history. Fresh seafood in Reykjavik, tapas in Madrid, pizza in Tuscany, cockles and laverbread in Wales... the range of Indian cuisine rivals that of, say, Italy rather than the whole of Europe. (Now where's that tongue-in-cheek smiley?)

Nick-H

I've had blazingly hot European cooking. chilly is hot -- with flavour. Cayenne just takes the skin off your mouth as you eat it!

I'd say that some of the British 'Indian' cooking is more subtle than the 'real' thing. And they tend to have taken on board the British liking for creaminess (which probably came from France, as the Brits certainly weren't into sauces, except gravy, when I was a small child).

In my old stomping ground of East London, there is a huge difference between the Tanddori chicken of the average 'Indian' (a mild dish) and that served by the places in Green Street. I suspect that the first (leaving out the far-too-many food-colour merchants) is coloured with paprika, the Green St cooks using red chilly/cayenne.

machadinha

What's funny is I've been told "curry" was derived by the British from a Gujarati dish called "karhi." This seems to be just one explanation though (surprise -- it's also said to be a Tamil word btw), another being that it's actually a bastardization of a British (Scottish?) word for stew, which the sailors then took eastward and got confounded with the dishes they found. I think it was discussed before here.

Nick-H

One thing I don't remember seeing in a British curry is ---- curry leaf!