May 28, 2020 • 25 mins
This creamy, warming dish is the subject of tremendous popularity -- and tremendous debate. Anney and Lauren dig into the many recipes and histories behind tikka masala.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of IHA Radio. I'm
Anne Reese and I'm Lauren voc Obam and today we're
talking about tika masala, uh the cravings. Yes, oh yes,
this is uh y'all. I did the research for this
yesterday and I immediately ordered a lot of Indian take
out that night. I looked up how to make chicken
(00:30):
tika Masala and was immediately deterred. Not because it was
super hard, but I just didn't have a lot of
that stuff like that would have been a lot of substitutions.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's it's a pretty you
can make substitutions. But um, but yes, to have maybe
a half I would say half of different things. That's
(00:53):
a different dish at that point, probably, yes, But I do.
I love chicken Tikka Masala. I have made it before,
just not now. Unfortunately. I will say I ate a
lot of it when I was in Britain, but not
a lot of it at all when I was in India,
which might might speak to its history, which is a teaser,
(01:14):
yes spoiler, omg um. Yeah, it's it's not a it's
not it's not my favorite dish, but it's tasty. Um.
I just got a big old tray of it from
your decab farmers market a couple of weeks ago, and
it was a really really really nice, really nice comfort food.
It is indeed mm hmmm. And doing this this research
(01:35):
reminded me of when we got to interview mir Juana Ronie,
Who's who's a chef who's gotten for dayg James Beard
nominations for serving Indian street food at his restaurants in Asheville,
North Carolina and here in Atlanta. UM but because he
explained that the foods that are served, especially beface style
(01:56):
at many Indian restaurants in the United States, uh are
are what he calls like wedding banquet food um, stuff
that most folks in India would only eat at like
a kind of fancy catered party um. And And furthermore,
that like that's saying Indian food like it's a monolith
is pretty ridiculous to begin with, because India has over
(02:17):
a billion people with just like countless regional food stuffs
and recipes and preferences and traditions and influences. So it's
not just the one thing. Oh yeah, And that was
certainly my experience when I was in India. I loved
hearing conversations about Northern Indian food versus Southern Indian food
(02:38):
and then breaking it down even more than that. And
I love, how ever, because I did get to travel
pretty pretty widely when I was in India and just
you know, everybody wants to share that special dish from
their region, and it was so different. Um, and China
is the same way. I I'm pretty sure I've told
this story before, but in my experience, most of Chinese
(02:59):
food in the United States and specifically from Hong Kong,
and that's like it. Yeah, And it's just so it
is a huge category of all these different different food
items and taste and and it was all delicious and
I miss it and crave it almost all the time. Yeah. Oh,
(03:21):
it's so hard with foods that you can't you just
can't get around here. Yeah, I know. And some of them,
I don't even know what they were, Like, I can't
even share. Okay, I think it was tofu. It's not
like I do what I've had. I bought that up
before and somebody did help me find out what that
might have been. It's like a b noodle sheep thing.
It sounds weird, but it's delicious. Oh I believe you anyway. Anyway, Uh,
(03:46):
let's get to our question. Redirect Tikka masala. What is it? Well, uh,
Tika masala can be many things, but at its heart,
it's a It's a dish of like chunks of usually
some kind of protein simmered in a purid tomato sauce
(04:07):
with some kind of dairy yogurt and or cream and
some kind of oil, preferably ghee, which is a brown
clarified butter to make that purid tomato sauce creamy um.
And then that sauce is spiced warm with a with
a blend including things like coriander, human cardamom, cloves, cinnamon,
things that don't start with the letter C, like turmericum, peppercorns,
(04:28):
plus some ginger, garlic, an onion, maybe chili paste or
chili powder. The protein is often chicken, but can be
anything from goat to fish to chunks of semisoft fresh cheese,
paneer um. And the result is this rich, saucy, savory
dish that's served hot with a rice and or flat
bread like the like just the most stalwart, creamy tomato soup.
(04:52):
I love it, I love it. Yeah. Another art project
creamy Tomatoes soup. I'm gonna shop this excellent. Uh but
but yeah yeah, So let's break all of this down
just a little bit more though, because okay, as as
I understand it, tica basically means um bits or pieces
(05:14):
of stuff, and most often indicates that the stuff in
question has been marinated in yogurt and lemon juice and
spices and then grilled like hot and quick until it's
charred on the outside and juicy on the inside, so good.
Um and massala um just means spices and indicates like
a like a blend of ground spices, and what's in
that blend will will vary depending on the cook and
(05:37):
on the blend's purpose. Um like uh like like Rani Marwana.
Rani Um also has a brand of packaged spices called
Spice Walla. It's excellent. They ship check them out if
you're looking for spices right now. Um but but yeah,
they sell like a tender massala a pecora, massala chi,
massala chop massala um. You know, blends that are inspired
(05:59):
by or intended for each of those dishes. So it's
just a spice blend um, and the ingredients in the
tender and masala include garam masala. So so it's a
it's a spice blend within a spice blend um and
and garum. By the way, it just means hot um.
But but it's like heating, not in the hot spicy sense,
but rather in like the rivetic sense of of warming
(06:22):
the body. Okay, yeah anyway, so like so like properly,
your tica masala should be a marinated, grilled protein that's
then stewed in your spiced sauce or covered with your
spiced sauce. So lots of recipes call for just stewing.
You can totally make it at home. Um, and and
(06:43):
you can. You can. You can adapt the recipe because
it's it's not what I would call a very strict recipe.
All right, I have best interceived. I will try again, um,
and I do ask someone who has made it at
home before. I do highly recommend you at home. It's
one of those things where you, at least in my case,
I never thought about making it at home. It seemed difficult,
(07:06):
and then when I did it, I was like, ah,
what accomplishment, delicious delicious accomplishment. Oh yeah, yes, well what
about the nutrition. It depends on how you do make it.
It can get kind of heavy with the with the
cream and the and the gee or butter or whatever
fats you're using um. And for sure, you know it's
best to pair it with them with a little bit
more vegetables for a boost of vitamins and dietary fiber.
(07:28):
But you know it's got a lot of protein um
and then at minimum decent amount of fat um. So
served with rice or bread, it will fill you up
and it will keep you going. Just you know, watch
your portion sizes. Eat a vegetable. Always a proponent of
eating a vegetable. Dam Yes, and we do have some
numbers for you, specically when it comes to chicken taica
(07:49):
mas salad or in the biz as it's called CTM.
That that's no joke. They use that all over the
place when I was researching this popular dish all over,
although some South Asians are disappointed by that fact again
according to some very opinionated articles there. According to the economists,
(08:10):
two point five billion pounds of the dish are consumed
every year as of two thousand nine, and it is
one of the most popular dishes in the United Kingdom.
I think it's in the top ten delivered um dishes.
Heinz sells a packaged version. Oh yeah, Harmel also makes fun.
There are lots of packaged versions out there, from from
(08:31):
like frozen and ready to heat and eat versions to
like canned sauces two prepared spice blends. It really is
quite a phenomenon, especially in the UK. Like Marks and
Spencer sells prepackaged chicken ticamasala sandwiches. Um, that's like if
our like CVS or something had them. Um McDonald added
a version of chicken Ticamasala to their limited time Indian
(08:53):
inspired menu back in two thousand one. It's a whole thing.
It is a whole thing. And what else is a
whole thing is the history and the debate around it. Yeah,
because if you if you couldn't, if you couldn't tell yes,
this is more of a UK thing than an India thing. Um,
(09:15):
and so so there, so there's been some some some
conversation about that, Yeah, conversation. We'll say, yeah, and we
will get into that. But first we're going to take
a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and
(09:39):
we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you so yes,
as we hinted at, the history of this one is
highly debated and very contentious. Is it an Indian dish,
is it actually from Britain, is it there riff on
curry or is it specifically from Glasgow, Scotland. Because depending
(10:00):
on who you ask, you will get just a huge
variety of yes, yes, yes, and opinions. One popular story
does place the dish's origins too, specifically the nineteen seventies
and specifically Glasgow, Scotland, as the creation of Pakistani chef
Ali Ahmad Oslam. Oslam was the chef of a well
(10:22):
known authentic curry house in that city, Glasgow, called shish Mahal.
After a customer sent chicken back to the kitchen for
being dry, Aslam, who was on an all liquid diet
due to an ulcer, added some tomato soup out of
a can. Story goes spices to the dish and then
in some versions he added in yogurt based on the
(10:44):
chicken tika that he used to make and that he likes,
and to a surprise, the customer loved it and became
a regular customer and brought all of his friends and
introduced all of his friends to this dish, and the
word spread and the popularity grew. It was soon found
out throughout the UK and that is how that version goes.
It is very popularly told. No legit proof zero, Yeah, yeah,
(11:12):
not at all. Food critic Rahul Verma weighed in on
the tica masala debate with it's basically a Punjabi dish
not more than forty fifty years old and must be
an accidental discovery which has had periodical improvisations. According to him,
he tasted what was basically chicken tika masala as a
street food in Uttar Pradesh earlier than this whole Glasgow story. Yes,
(11:37):
but okay. In two thousand and nine, a labor MP,
Mohammed Sarwar formally requested that Parliament officially named Glasgow as
the birthplace of chicken Tikka Masala and the European Union
protected geographical status that comes with it. Yeah yeah, like
(11:58):
like Champagne level. That's what he on it for chicken
tikka masala. It did not make it to debate. I
think that's probably for the good of all of us,
probably probably Lauren. And this was after a two thousand
one attempt by the then Foreign Secretary of Britain to
name chicken Tikka Masala as the national dish. And here
(12:21):
is a quote. Chicken Tikka Masala is now a true
Britain national dish, not only because it is the most popular,
but because it is a perfect illustration of the way
Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Chicken tika is an
Indian dish. The massala sauce was added to satisfy the
desire of British people to have their meat served in gravy.
(12:41):
And he and he meant this as a as a
positive Um very much to me, a perfect illustration of
the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Sounds a
little bit negative when you consider colonialism, um, but he
but he meant it to be a positive of he did.
(13:02):
And it will come as no surprise that many people
saw it, like you, Lauren, especially people from India who
very much some of them very much resented this, seeing
it as something that the British stole um during colonialism
and brought back and maybe made it their own. But
(13:22):
it's still originated in India and that maybe the British
adapted it, but they were erasing the true history and
painting that erasure with a positive brush of being multicultural. Um.
Some experts contend that the dish was a product of
the British in British India unable to handle the spice
of chicken tica. Um. So that's kind of like origin
(13:46):
story number two. Yeah, but but yes, this whole thing
was a was a whole to do um. Critics of
the Foreign Secretaries praise called chicken tica masala innocuous curry
and and accused the British at large of having an
appetite for only quote the easiest form of exoticism mhm,
(14:09):
also a magpie, indiscriminacy wow, and amended insularity. Those are
some harsh takedowns. Those certainly are those. Those are quotes,
by the way, from a book called Food Quality and
Consumer Value Delivering food that Satisfies. And the latter two
are further quoted in that from an article that doesn't
(14:30):
appear to be online um, but decided as being from
The Times from two thousand one. The article being titled
Goodness Gracious chicken Tika smacks of our capability for self
delusion of a pretty great title. I wish I could
read that article. It sounds like an absolute It sounds
like an absolute smash it does. We can dream one day. Yeah.
(14:54):
From Lizzy Collingham's book Curry, A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, quote,
it was not a shining example of British multiculturalism, but
a demonstration of the British facility for reducing all foreign
foods to their most unappetizing and inedible forms. Oh snap, snap, indeed, gosh,
that is okay, okay. You can say, what do you
(15:17):
want to about the origins of chicken tika masala, but
it is not the least appetizing or the least edible
form of anything. That is a pretty harsh the least edible.
But people, they got strong opinions about this. They do,
they do. It's true, that's fair, it's true. Uh okay,
(15:40):
So yeah, there's that whole to do as you said.
There is another popular story about chicken tika masala's origins
that argues that tika masala was invented by someone of
Bangladeshi descent in Britain. Food historians Colleen and Peter Grove
are big proponent of this theory, pointing to a nineteen
(16:02):
sixty one recipe from Baal Beer Sings for Shahai Chicken
Massala published in the book Indian Cookery. Peter Grove claims
that the Glasgow story was a rumor that he created
two appeased journalists. Okay, he got so tired of like
fielding calls about it, he just made up this story,
(16:23):
according to him. Um the Groves also argued that buttered
chicken was the original chicken teaco Massala and placed that
dish's origins to a new Delhi restaurant called Moti Mahal
that opened its doors in nineteen. According to them, the
chef worked with a local man to create the first
tan doory spice mix, which was black pepper, ground coriander
(16:46):
and a mild red pepper. They then used that to
marinate their chicken, and not wanting to waste the resulting
flavored chicken juice, the cooks added butter and tomato to it. Yeah.
The story here goes that the chef um Kundan Lal
was also the first person to use a tan door oven,
which is is traditionally used for breads to cook this
(17:07):
marinated chicken and then this cooked cubed tandoried chicken was
then tossed in that sace. There you go, butter chicken.
It was a pretty immediate hit, and it's spread throughout
the country and from there the world. So the story
goes yeah yeah, yeah, but but this story UM. Experts
in food history in this region do support the story. UM.
(17:29):
And today Law's grandson still owns the family restaurant and
has like expanded the brand to a hundred and twenty
restaurants in India, plus franchises in the Middle East, in
Africa and New Zealand. Um. He's also got cookbooks, all
kinds of stuff going on. It's it's a it's a
really fascinating little little slice yeah. Uh. And then another
piece of this chicken tika Masala puzzle is that in
(17:53):
the sixties there was an influx of Bangladeshi people to
the United Kingdom and many of them opened Indian restaurants
with westernized dishes like chicken tica masala. So there's that uh.
And then certainly from articles I read, there are some
Indian chefs that said there's nothing called chicken tica masala
(18:16):
in India. Some argue that even so, it is still
an Indian dish. It's just popular everywhere else. But in
Um Hong Kong, Indian restaurant owner ashitash Bish makes the
case that the tica part goes back five thousand years
when the clay tandor ovens were invented. The first emperor
(18:37):
of the Mughal dynasty barber who he was worried about
choking on bones, so he ordered his chefs to get
rid of the bones. During medieval times, that's when that
probably would have happened. A chef at Delhi's Kareem Hotel
claimed that the nineteen sixty one recipe that we mentioned
earlier has been passed down from generation to generation and
his family, making it truly of Indian descent. Okay, yeah,
(19:02):
I cannot personally argue with with any of these, but
I love that that's officially three and a half for
Ish origin stories. Cool. A lot of people making claims
they do they do UM and at any rate. UM
in the City Council in Salisbury, England kind of put
(19:25):
their foot in it really hard when UM when they
informed a local street food vendor that she could not
sell chicken tika masala at a St. George's Day celebration UM,
which is the feast day for St. George, which is
the patron saint of England, because they said this this festival,
all the dishes sold at it had to be English
themed and apparently, according to them, Chicken Tika Masala didn't
(19:53):
didn't make the grade um but there was a kerfuffle.
They later apologized and invited her and her chick and
Tika Masala back. So whoa, yeah, I didn't know. So
many like recent like politicians try at the National Food
(20:14):
I got a career fuffle out of St. George's Day celebration. Yeah, wow,
you know I I had always just thought of it
as a as a tasty comfort food, kind of kind
of warm and spicy mm hmm, yeah, delicious with non
I yeah, I did not know. I did not know,
(20:37):
and now we do. And so do you listeners. Well,
I mean we know that a lot of people have
a lot of different theories. That's really all we can
offer you at this juncture. Yeah, pretty pretty much. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So if you have any information on the history of
(20:58):
Chicken Tikka Masala, I mean we your all ears absolutely yes, yes,
And speaking of we do have some listener mail for you.
We do. But first we've got one more quick break
for a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
(21:19):
you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with listener nom.
It's my face when I realized that I'm not going
to get to the bottom of my history section. I'll
never know mysteries, histories. It's true, so many of them,
(21:41):
so many of them. Um for a listener mail. Today
we have two messages about Girl Scout cookies. But in Canada,
Aaron wrote, thank you for your lighthearted podcast about Girl
Scout cookies. I have many friends in the USA and
I'm always delighted to see the cookies sold by their
daughter Errs. I am a twenty five year member of
(22:02):
the Girl Guides of Canada and a mom of brownie
of my own. Every year. In Canada, we also sell cookies,
but the system is very different. We only have two
kinds of cookies, which are each sold in their own season.
Ball cookies are similar to a sinment. They have a
chocolate cookie base covered with a white mint cream layer
and the whole thing is covered in chocolate. These are
(22:23):
often the best seller and they freeze really well to
pull out at Christmas. Spring cookies are sandwich cookies and
two flavors chocolate and chocolate most similar to a Fuggio cookie. Well,
that's news to me, Fuccio, and the vanilla is like
vanilla Oreo. These cookies have remained virtually unchanged for thirty years,
though they are now peanut free guaranteed, so it is
(22:46):
always entertaining to see all of the American flavors. Huh oh,
I like that, I like a I like a good
cookie tradition. Yeah, oh, you know, I love a good
cookie tradition. I live for a good cookie tradition. Um
Melissa wrote, I recently listened to the podcast about Girl
Scout cookies and remembered a time from my childhood when
(23:07):
I was a Girl Guide since we don't have Girl
Scouts in Canada. In Canada, we only have Chocolate mint
which is sold in the fall, and chocolate and vanilla
sandwich ones that are sold in the spring. When I
was in middle school, I was a pathfinder girls in
grades seven to nine. My sisters were also in Guides
girls in grades four to six, and my mom was
a guider in my sister's unit that spring. The unit
(23:30):
that my mom was with had several girls quit part
way through the year, and the cookies were already ordered.
When they arrived for the season, they were stacked in
the entryway of the house. Because so many girls quit,
we got stuck with the now extra cases of cookies
and trying to sell them. It was around twenty cases
of cookies stacked near the front door of our home.
Because of this, we were selling them into the summer months.
(23:52):
To this day, I only buy cookies from members that
are in grade seven and up because it is so
much harder to sell them when you're no longer cute
and adorable your uniform. I've never really thought about that
aspect of it. Oh oh, I bet yeah, yeah. No.
I mean if it's like a like a sassy fourth
grader is like buy cookies now, I'm like, okay, yes, ma'am, Like,
(24:14):
here you go. If if a seventh grader is like cookies,
I'm like, uh so that's sad. Oh No, definitely yes,
support support all your local girl Scouts, guides, brownies, et cetera. Whatever, Yes,
whatever the terminology is, I'm definitely. Again. I don't really
(24:37):
buy them because I'm a terrible person, but I do
send the links to all my friends and I let
them know. So I'm going to keep under the age.
You're You're supportive, You're You're a You're a cookie supporter,
a cookie supporter, a proud cookie supporter. Thanks to your
(24:58):
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(25:20):
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are coming your way
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of IHA Radio. I'm
Anne Reese and I'm Lauren voc Obam and today we're
talking about tika masala, uh the cravings. Yes, oh yes,
this is uh y'all. I did the research for this
yesterday and I immediately ordered a lot of Indian take
out that night. I looked up how to make chicken
(00:30):
tika Masala and was immediately deterred. Not because it was
super hard, but I just didn't have a lot of
that stuff like that would have been a lot of substitutions.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's it's a pretty you
can make substitutions. But um, but yes, to have maybe
a half I would say half of different things. That's
(00:53):
a different dish at that point, probably, yes, But I do.
I love chicken Tikka Masala. I have made it before,
just not now. Unfortunately. I will say I ate a
lot of it when I was in Britain, but not
a lot of it at all when I was in India,
which might might speak to its history, which is a teaser,
(01:14):
yes spoiler, omg um. Yeah, it's it's not a it's
not it's not my favorite dish, but it's tasty. Um.
I just got a big old tray of it from
your decab farmers market a couple of weeks ago, and
it was a really really really nice, really nice comfort food.
It is indeed mm hmmm. And doing this this research
(01:35):
reminded me of when we got to interview mir Juana Ronie,
Who's who's a chef who's gotten for dayg James Beard
nominations for serving Indian street food at his restaurants in Asheville,
North Carolina and here in Atlanta. UM but because he
explained that the foods that are served, especially beface style
(01:56):
at many Indian restaurants in the United States, uh are
are what he calls like wedding banquet food um, stuff
that most folks in India would only eat at like
a kind of fancy catered party um. And And furthermore,
that like that's saying Indian food like it's a monolith
is pretty ridiculous to begin with, because India has over
(02:17):
a billion people with just like countless regional food stuffs
and recipes and preferences and traditions and influences. So it's
not just the one thing. Oh yeah, And that was
certainly my experience when I was in India. I loved
hearing conversations about Northern Indian food versus Southern Indian food
(02:38):
and then breaking it down even more than that. And
I love, how ever, because I did get to travel
pretty pretty widely when I was in India and just
you know, everybody wants to share that special dish from
their region, and it was so different. Um, and China
is the same way. I I'm pretty sure I've told
this story before, but in my experience, most of Chinese
(02:59):
food in the United States and specifically from Hong Kong,
and that's like it. Yeah, And it's just so it
is a huge category of all these different different food
items and taste and and it was all delicious and
I miss it and crave it almost all the time. Yeah. Oh,
(03:21):
it's so hard with foods that you can't you just
can't get around here. Yeah, I know. And some of them,
I don't even know what they were, Like, I can't
even share. Okay, I think it was tofu. It's not
like I do what I've had. I bought that up
before and somebody did help me find out what that
might have been. It's like a b noodle sheep thing.
It sounds weird, but it's delicious. Oh I believe you anyway. Anyway, Uh,
(03:46):
let's get to our question. Redirect Tikka masala. What is it? Well, uh,
Tika masala can be many things, but at its heart,
it's a It's a dish of like chunks of usually
some kind of protein simmered in a purid tomato sauce
(04:07):
with some kind of dairy yogurt and or cream and
some kind of oil, preferably ghee, which is a brown
clarified butter to make that purid tomato sauce creamy um.
And then that sauce is spiced warm with a with
a blend including things like coriander, human cardamom, cloves, cinnamon,
things that don't start with the letter C, like turmericum, peppercorns,
(04:28):
plus some ginger, garlic, an onion, maybe chili paste or
chili powder. The protein is often chicken, but can be
anything from goat to fish to chunks of semisoft fresh cheese,
paneer um. And the result is this rich, saucy, savory
dish that's served hot with a rice and or flat
bread like the like just the most stalwart, creamy tomato soup.
(04:52):
I love it, I love it. Yeah. Another art project
creamy Tomatoes soup. I'm gonna shop this excellent. Uh but
but yeah yeah, So let's break all of this down
just a little bit more though, because okay, as as
I understand it, tica basically means um bits or pieces
(05:14):
of stuff, and most often indicates that the stuff in
question has been marinated in yogurt and lemon juice and
spices and then grilled like hot and quick until it's
charred on the outside and juicy on the inside, so good.
Um and massala um just means spices and indicates like
a like a blend of ground spices, and what's in
that blend will will vary depending on the cook and
(05:37):
on the blend's purpose. Um like uh like like Rani Marwana.
Rani Um also has a brand of packaged spices called
Spice Walla. It's excellent. They ship check them out if
you're looking for spices right now. Um but but yeah,
they sell like a tender massala a pecora, massala chi,
massala chop massala um. You know, blends that are inspired
(05:59):
by or intended for each of those dishes. So it's
just a spice blend um, and the ingredients in the
tender and masala include garam masala. So so it's a
it's a spice blend within a spice blend um and
and garum. By the way, it just means hot um.
But but it's like heating, not in the hot spicy sense,
but rather in like the rivetic sense of of warming
(06:22):
the body. Okay, yeah anyway, so like so like properly,
your tica masala should be a marinated, grilled protein that's
then stewed in your spiced sauce or covered with your
spiced sauce. So lots of recipes call for just stewing.
You can totally make it at home. Um, and and
(06:43):
you can. You can. You can adapt the recipe because
it's it's not what I would call a very strict recipe.
All right, I have best interceived. I will try again, um,
and I do ask someone who has made it at
home before. I do highly recommend you at home. It's
one of those things where you, at least in my case,
I never thought about making it at home. It seemed difficult,
(07:06):
and then when I did it, I was like, ah,
what accomplishment, delicious delicious accomplishment. Oh yeah, yes, well what
about the nutrition. It depends on how you do make it.
It can get kind of heavy with the with the
cream and the and the gee or butter or whatever
fats you're using um. And for sure, you know it's
best to pair it with them with a little bit
more vegetables for a boost of vitamins and dietary fiber.
(07:28):
But you know it's got a lot of protein um
and then at minimum decent amount of fat um. So
served with rice or bread, it will fill you up
and it will keep you going. Just you know, watch
your portion sizes. Eat a vegetable. Always a proponent of
eating a vegetable. Dam Yes, and we do have some
numbers for you, specically when it comes to chicken taica
(07:49):
mas salad or in the biz as it's called CTM.
That that's no joke. They use that all over the
place when I was researching this popular dish all over,
although some South Asians are disappointed by that fact again
according to some very opinionated articles there. According to the economists,
(08:10):
two point five billion pounds of the dish are consumed
every year as of two thousand nine, and it is
one of the most popular dishes in the United Kingdom.
I think it's in the top ten delivered um dishes.
Heinz sells a packaged version. Oh yeah, Harmel also makes fun.
There are lots of packaged versions out there, from from
(08:31):
like frozen and ready to heat and eat versions to
like canned sauces two prepared spice blends. It really is
quite a phenomenon, especially in the UK. Like Marks and
Spencer sells prepackaged chicken ticamasala sandwiches. Um, that's like if
our like CVS or something had them. Um McDonald added
a version of chicken Ticamasala to their limited time Indian
(08:53):
inspired menu back in two thousand one. It's a whole thing.
It is a whole thing. And what else is a
whole thing is the history and the debate around it. Yeah,
because if you if you couldn't, if you couldn't tell yes,
this is more of a UK thing than an India thing. Um,
(09:15):
and so so there, so there's been some some some
conversation about that, Yeah, conversation. We'll say, yeah, and we
will get into that. But first we're going to take
a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and
(09:39):
we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you so yes,
as we hinted at, the history of this one is
highly debated and very contentious. Is it an Indian dish,
is it actually from Britain, is it there riff on
curry or is it specifically from Glasgow, Scotland. Because depending
(10:00):
on who you ask, you will get just a huge
variety of yes, yes, yes, and opinions. One popular story
does place the dish's origins too, specifically the nineteen seventies
and specifically Glasgow, Scotland, as the creation of Pakistani chef
Ali Ahmad Oslam. Oslam was the chef of a well
(10:22):
known authentic curry house in that city, Glasgow, called shish Mahal.
After a customer sent chicken back to the kitchen for
being dry, Aslam, who was on an all liquid diet
due to an ulcer, added some tomato soup out of
a can. Story goes spices to the dish and then
in some versions he added in yogurt based on the
(10:44):
chicken tika that he used to make and that he likes,
and to a surprise, the customer loved it and became
a regular customer and brought all of his friends and
introduced all of his friends to this dish, and the
word spread and the popularity grew. It was soon found
out throughout the UK and that is how that version goes.
It is very popularly told. No legit proof zero, Yeah, yeah,
(11:12):
not at all. Food critic Rahul Verma weighed in on
the tica masala debate with it's basically a Punjabi dish
not more than forty fifty years old and must be
an accidental discovery which has had periodical improvisations. According to him,
he tasted what was basically chicken tika masala as a
street food in Uttar Pradesh earlier than this whole Glasgow story. Yes,
(11:37):
but okay. In two thousand and nine, a labor MP,
Mohammed Sarwar formally requested that Parliament officially named Glasgow as
the birthplace of chicken Tikka Masala and the European Union
protected geographical status that comes with it. Yeah yeah, like
(11:58):
like Champagne level. That's what he on it for chicken
tikka masala. It did not make it to debate. I
think that's probably for the good of all of us,
probably probably Lauren. And this was after a two thousand
one attempt by the then Foreign Secretary of Britain to
name chicken Tikka Masala as the national dish. And here
(12:21):
is a quote. Chicken Tikka Masala is now a true
Britain national dish, not only because it is the most popular,
but because it is a perfect illustration of the way
Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Chicken tika is an
Indian dish. The massala sauce was added to satisfy the
desire of British people to have their meat served in gravy.
(12:41):
And he and he meant this as a as a
positive Um very much to me, a perfect illustration of
the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Sounds a
little bit negative when you consider colonialism, um, but he
but he meant it to be a positive of he did.
(13:02):
And it will come as no surprise that many people
saw it, like you, Lauren, especially people from India who
very much some of them very much resented this, seeing
it as something that the British stole um during colonialism
and brought back and maybe made it their own. But
(13:22):
it's still originated in India and that maybe the British
adapted it, but they were erasing the true history and
painting that erasure with a positive brush of being multicultural. Um.
Some experts contend that the dish was a product of
the British in British India unable to handle the spice
of chicken tica. Um. So that's kind of like origin
(13:46):
story number two. Yeah, but but yes, this whole thing
was a was a whole to do um. Critics of
the Foreign Secretaries praise called chicken tica masala innocuous curry
and and accused the British at large of having an
appetite for only quote the easiest form of exoticism mhm,
(14:09):
also a magpie, indiscriminacy wow, and amended insularity. Those are
some harsh takedowns. Those certainly are those. Those are quotes,
by the way, from a book called Food Quality and
Consumer Value Delivering food that Satisfies. And the latter two
are further quoted in that from an article that doesn't
(14:30):
appear to be online um, but decided as being from
The Times from two thousand one. The article being titled
Goodness Gracious chicken Tika smacks of our capability for self
delusion of a pretty great title. I wish I could
read that article. It sounds like an absolute It sounds
like an absolute smash it does. We can dream one day. Yeah.
(14:54):
From Lizzy Collingham's book Curry, A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, quote,
it was not a shining example of British multiculturalism, but
a demonstration of the British facility for reducing all foreign
foods to their most unappetizing and inedible forms. Oh snap, snap, indeed, gosh,
that is okay, okay. You can say, what do you
(15:17):
want to about the origins of chicken tika masala, but
it is not the least appetizing or the least edible
form of anything. That is a pretty harsh the least edible.
But people, they got strong opinions about this. They do,
they do. It's true, that's fair, it's true. Uh okay,
(15:40):
So yeah, there's that whole to do as you said.
There is another popular story about chicken tika masala's origins
that argues that tika masala was invented by someone of
Bangladeshi descent in Britain. Food historians Colleen and Peter Grove
are big proponent of this theory, pointing to a nineteen
(16:02):
sixty one recipe from Baal Beer Sings for Shahai Chicken
Massala published in the book Indian Cookery. Peter Grove claims
that the Glasgow story was a rumor that he created
two appeased journalists. Okay, he got so tired of like
fielding calls about it, he just made up this story,
(16:23):
according to him. Um the Groves also argued that buttered
chicken was the original chicken teaco Massala and placed that
dish's origins to a new Delhi restaurant called Moti Mahal
that opened its doors in nineteen. According to them, the
chef worked with a local man to create the first
tan doory spice mix, which was black pepper, ground coriander
(16:46):
and a mild red pepper. They then used that to
marinate their chicken, and not wanting to waste the resulting
flavored chicken juice, the cooks added butter and tomato to it. Yeah.
The story here goes that the chef um Kundan Lal
was also the first person to use a tan door oven,
which is is traditionally used for breads to cook this
(17:07):
marinated chicken and then this cooked cubed tandoried chicken was
then tossed in that sace. There you go, butter chicken.
It was a pretty immediate hit, and it's spread throughout
the country and from there the world. So the story
goes yeah yeah, yeah, but but this story UM. Experts
in food history in this region do support the story. UM.
(17:29):
And today Law's grandson still owns the family restaurant and
has like expanded the brand to a hundred and twenty
restaurants in India, plus franchises in the Middle East, in
Africa and New Zealand. Um. He's also got cookbooks, all
kinds of stuff going on. It's it's a it's a
really fascinating little little slice yeah. Uh. And then another
piece of this chicken tika Masala puzzle is that in
(17:53):
the sixties there was an influx of Bangladeshi people to
the United Kingdom and many of them opened Indian restaurants
with westernized dishes like chicken tica masala. So there's that uh.
And then certainly from articles I read, there are some
Indian chefs that said there's nothing called chicken tica masala
(18:16):
in India. Some argue that even so, it is still
an Indian dish. It's just popular everywhere else. But in
Um Hong Kong, Indian restaurant owner ashitash Bish makes the
case that the tica part goes back five thousand years
when the clay tandor ovens were invented. The first emperor
(18:37):
of the Mughal dynasty barber who he was worried about
choking on bones, so he ordered his chefs to get
rid of the bones. During medieval times, that's when that
probably would have happened. A chef at Delhi's Kareem Hotel
claimed that the nineteen sixty one recipe that we mentioned
earlier has been passed down from generation to generation and
his family, making it truly of Indian descent. Okay, yeah,
(19:02):
I cannot personally argue with with any of these, but
I love that that's officially three and a half for
Ish origin stories. Cool. A lot of people making claims
they do they do UM and at any rate. UM
in the City Council in Salisbury, England kind of put
(19:25):
their foot in it really hard when UM when they
informed a local street food vendor that she could not
sell chicken tika masala at a St. George's Day celebration UM,
which is the feast day for St. George, which is
the patron saint of England, because they said this this festival,
all the dishes sold at it had to be English
themed and apparently, according to them, Chicken Tika Masala didn't
(19:53):
didn't make the grade um but there was a kerfuffle.
They later apologized and invited her and her chick and
Tika Masala back. So whoa, yeah, I didn't know. So
many like recent like politicians try at the National Food
(20:14):
I got a career fuffle out of St. George's Day celebration. Yeah, wow,
you know I I had always just thought of it
as a as a tasty comfort food, kind of kind
of warm and spicy mm hmm, yeah, delicious with non
I yeah, I did not know. I did not know,
(20:37):
and now we do. And so do you listeners. Well,
I mean we know that a lot of people have
a lot of different theories. That's really all we can
offer you at this juncture. Yeah, pretty pretty much. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So if you have any information on the history of
(20:58):
Chicken Tikka Masala, I mean we your all ears absolutely yes, yes,
And speaking of we do have some listener mail for you.
We do. But first we've got one more quick break
for a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
(21:19):
you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with listener nom.
It's my face when I realized that I'm not going
to get to the bottom of my history section. I'll
never know mysteries, histories. It's true, so many of them,
(21:41):
so many of them. Um for a listener mail. Today
we have two messages about Girl Scout cookies. But in Canada,
Aaron wrote, thank you for your lighthearted podcast about Girl
Scout cookies. I have many friends in the USA and
I'm always delighted to see the cookies sold by their
daughter Errs. I am a twenty five year member of
(22:02):
the Girl Guides of Canada and a mom of brownie
of my own. Every year. In Canada, we also sell cookies,
but the system is very different. We only have two
kinds of cookies, which are each sold in their own season.
Ball cookies are similar to a sinment. They have a
chocolate cookie base covered with a white mint cream layer
and the whole thing is covered in chocolate. These are
(22:23):
often the best seller and they freeze really well to
pull out at Christmas. Spring cookies are sandwich cookies and
two flavors chocolate and chocolate most similar to a Fuggio cookie. Well,
that's news to me, Fuccio, and the vanilla is like
vanilla Oreo. These cookies have remained virtually unchanged for thirty years,
though they are now peanut free guaranteed, so it is
(22:46):
always entertaining to see all of the American flavors. Huh oh,
I like that, I like a I like a good
cookie tradition. Yeah, oh, you know, I love a good
cookie tradition. I live for a good cookie tradition. Um
Melissa wrote, I recently listened to the podcast about Girl
Scout cookies and remembered a time from my childhood when
(23:07):
I was a Girl Guide since we don't have Girl
Scouts in Canada. In Canada, we only have Chocolate mint
which is sold in the fall, and chocolate and vanilla
sandwich ones that are sold in the spring. When I
was in middle school, I was a pathfinder girls in
grades seven to nine. My sisters were also in Guides
girls in grades four to six, and my mom was
a guider in my sister's unit that spring. The unit
(23:30):
that my mom was with had several girls quit part
way through the year, and the cookies were already ordered.
When they arrived for the season, they were stacked in
the entryway of the house. Because so many girls quit,
we got stuck with the now extra cases of cookies
and trying to sell them. It was around twenty cases
of cookies stacked near the front door of our home.
Because of this, we were selling them into the summer months.
(23:52):
To this day, I only buy cookies from members that
are in grade seven and up because it is so
much harder to sell them when you're no longer cute
and adorable your uniform. I've never really thought about that
aspect of it. Oh oh, I bet yeah, yeah. No.
I mean if it's like a like a sassy fourth
grader is like buy cookies now, I'm like, okay, yes, ma'am, Like,
(24:14):
here you go. If if a seventh grader is like cookies,
I'm like, uh so that's sad. Oh No, definitely yes,
support support all your local girl Scouts, guides, brownies, et cetera. Whatever, Yes,
whatever the terminology is, I'm definitely. Again. I don't really
(24:37):
buy them because I'm a terrible person, but I do
send the links to all my friends and I let
them know. So I'm going to keep under the age.
You're You're supportive, You're You're a You're a cookie supporter,
a cookie supporter, a proud cookie supporter. Thanks to your
(24:58):
vote that those listeners are writing to us. If you
would like to write to us, you can. Our email
is hello at savor pod dot com. We are also
on social media. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at savor pod and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, you can visit
the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(25:20):
listen to your favorite shows. Thanks it's always to our
super producers, Dylan Fagin and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you
for listening, and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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