Anyone who’s on their early morning jog or a drive in South Manchester, England has more often than not had the feeling of having just been swallowed up by an inter-dimensional portal. This feeling peaks at Wilmslow Road, which runs through the centre of Rusholme. In an instant, the physical landscape of top-notch, stone-structure, Michelin-starred fine-dining restaurants with coiffured waiters gives way to sprightly, pop-up eateries with attractive hoardings.
Welcome to ‘The Curry Mile’ — an area of England that is believed to have the largest concentration of South Asian restaurants in the United Kingdom. Since the 50s — when this area became a boomtown of textile mills recruiting men from South Asia who went on to set up their restaurants here — Curry Mile has become synonymous with Indian food.
Kebabs (minced meat cooked on skewers), grills, shawarma (a Middle Eastern dish consisting of meat that is cut into thin slices, stacked in an inverted cone, and roasted on a slow-turning vertical spit), gol gappas (deep-fried breaded hollow spherical shell filled with a combination of finely diced potato, onion, peas, and chickpea) and tandoori chicken (a dish made from chicken marinated in yoghurt and spices and roasted in a tandoor, a cylindrical clay oven) make up a major part of the area’s offerings.
Brilliant and unique though each menu is — a fact that owes to their owners’ cultural roots in different parts of South Asia — the restaurants at Curry Mile are bound by a single promise: to serve you the best chicken tikka masala. So, have a seat while we regale you with the vibrant (and debatable) origins of one of history’s most loved dishes.
A very saucy mystery
Few topics in history have conjured up as much debate as have a bunch of boneless pieces of chicken, marinated in spices and yoghurt, cooked in a tandoor, brushed with ghee and served in a smooth tomato-cream sauce. Food aficionados, governments, historians and the people of Britain and India have constantly been engaged in a tug-of-war to dispute the origins of the chicken tikka masala.
A milder take on this, as someone neutral to the argument, would suggest is that the gravy is a cross-fertilisation of ideas and a genius of many minds. Today, we explore this diplomatic stance, while also hearing out what each side has to say about the tikka.
The most accepted story is also the most culturally vibrant one. It involves a Bangladeshi chef at a Scottish restaurant and (multiple sources suggest different professions) a hungry bus driver.
One rainy day in 1971, Chef Ali Ahmed Aslam cooked up a dish (chicken tikka) for a customer who stopped by the Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland. The customer did not seem too appeased by the order and sent it back to the kitchens terming it “too dry”.
Channelling his curatorial skills, Chef Ali decided to make up for the dish’s lacking moisture with a creamy tomato soup. This seemed to satisfy the bus driver who turned into a loyal customer at the Shish Mahal and made it a point to order the dish on each visit.
Meanwhile, the name and fame of the chicken tikka masala spread far and wide, and restaurants in England were quick to clone the idea, furthering its legacy.
Chef Ali passed in 2022 at the age of 77, but not before he gave multiple interviews that were all aimed at finding out where the origins of the dish truly lie. In one of his interviews with AFP, Ali seconded the theory that the tikka was his creation.
“Chicken tikka masala was invented in this [Shish Mahal] restaurant. We used to make chicken tikka, and one day a customer said, ‘I’d take some sauce with that, this is a bit dry’. We thought we’d better cook the chicken with some sauce. So from here, we cooked chicken tikka with a sauce that contains yoghurt, cream, and spices. It’s a dish prepared according to our customer’s taste. Usually, they don’t take hot curry – that’s why we cook it with yoghurt and cream.”
Who is taking the prize home?
What really set the stage for debate, was a speech made in 2001 by the then-British foreign secretary Robin Cook who hailed the chicken tikka masala as a “true British national dish”. Indians weren’t thrilled with this claim.
As Cook went on, “…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 tikka is an Indian dish. The masala sauce was added to satisfy the desire of British people to have their meat served in gravy.”
This was followed by another attempt in 2009 to pin the dish’s origin to Europe when Mohammad Sarwar, then Labour MP for Glasgow Central, campaigned for the dish to be given EU Protected Designation of Origin status.
But the motion was tabled by the House of Commons.
If you were starting to think that the war of chicken tikka masala’s origins were just between the two subcontinents (India and Europe), you are wrong. Even within India, the origin stands to be debated — is it Mogul or Punjabi?
Zaeemuddin Ahmad of the iconic Karim’s restaurant in Delhi, is of the first opinion, saying the recipe was passed down through the generations in his family. As he relayed to The Daily Telegraph, “Chicken tikka masala is an authentic Mughlai recipe prepared by our forefathers who were royal chefs in the Mughal period.”
Meanwhile, food critic Rahul Verma claims to have first tasted chicken tikka masala in 1971 and insists it is a Punjabi dish.
This belief is shared by many who see the chicken tikka masala as a mutation of the butter chicken, which is (and this is set in stone) the creation of Kundan Lal Gujral, the man behind Moti Mahal restaurant in Delhi.
Though look-alikes, the butter chicken and chicken tikka masala differ in their taste palate and the hero ingredient (aside from chicken) that they feature; the former has copious amounts of butter, and a sweeter taste, while the latter is on the spicier side.
Naved Nasir, executive chef of the UK’s popular Dishoom does not favour this opinion of the tikka being a consequence of the butter chicken.
Speaking to Business Insider he said, “The chicken tikka masala didn’t originate from India, first of all. There is a history of butter chicken, which comes from a place called Moti Mahal in Old Delhi. [It came] over here as the recipe of the butter chicken. I think the origin of the chicken tikka masala actually happened here in the UK. I don’t think people know that this was the dish that was invented here.”
While culinary experts aren’t backing down from whose brainchild the tikka really was, it seems foodies around the world aren’t too bothered by this. As long as the table has a good chicken tikka masala. As a Hindustan Times article dating back to 2007 states, “The organisers of the National Curry Week have estimated that if all the portions of chicken tikka masala consumed annually in the country were stacked on top of one another, they would form a tower 2,770 times taller than the Greenwich Millenium Dome.”
There is a chance that the present statistics have outranked these. Questions about the ethnicity of the tikka might always remain unanswered. But we can all agree on one thing; whoever came up with this ingenious, humble, versatile dish has a special place in history.
Edited by Pranita Bhat
No comments:
Post a Comment