Butter Chicken with Rice

This has to be the BEST Butter Chicken I ever made or tasted!!! I got the recipe from Neelam Batra's 1,000 Indian Recipes... Although It wasn't a butter chicken recipe, it was just a recipe for her Butter-Cream Sauce with Fresh Tomatos. I adapted it just a bit to suit me. I grilled some chicken breasts, basting them with butter, making sure they were good and charred in a couple spots, and then I simmered them in this sauce. The result was SO amazing!!! I served it with some simple cumin rice and a potato salad I also got from the same book... I will share the potato salad recipe in my next post :)

For Butter-Cream Sauce -

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 inch cinnamon
  
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 black cardamom pods, crushed lightly
• 7 green cardamom pods, crushed lightly
• 10 whole cloves
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 inch ginger, chopped
• 1 - 3 fresh green chilies (I put them in whole and let them disintigrate in the sauce)
• 5 large tomatos -or- 2 cans, 15 ounce each tomato sauce (This is my preferred method)
• 1 teaspoon ground Paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 2 1/2 cups water
  
• salt to taste
• 1 teaspoon ground, dried fenugreek leaves
• 1 cup heavy cream
• Cilantro for garnish
  

Method:

1. Heat butter in large saucepan over medium heat and cook the cinnamon, bay leaves, black and green cardamom pods, cloves, garlic and ginger until light brown, about 2 minutes.
2. Add the tomato's or tomato sauce, paprika, nutmeg, water and green chilies and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until volume reduces by half, 20 - 25 minutes. (At this time, I added my chicken and simmered until it was a little thicker.)
   
3. Add the salt and fenugreek and cook, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes.
   
4. Add the cream and simmer over low heat another 5 minutes to blend flavors. Garnish with Cilantro and Serve!
   

Grilled chicken, waiting to be simmered in that amazing sauce!

The rice was simply flavored with 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds and 1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper, which was first sauteed in a tablespoon of peanut oil... then 2 cups soaked rice was added along with 2 3/4 cups water.

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