What do you get when you cross hot Indian food with the English love of tomatoes and all things creamy? Chicken Tikka Masala is a famous combination of chicken tikka and masala.Chicken tikka is a marinated piece of meat cooked in a tandoor, an Indian oven made of clay and coal-fired. Masala is gravy commonly made out of some kind of tomato gravy or puree with cream and various Indian spices.It is technically a mild curry dish, though the addition of sometimes large amounts of tartrazine causes the dish to often look orange.In other recipes, it can look anything from red to orange to green.
Chicken Tikka Masala is possibly the most popular Indian dish in the world, and has arguably replaced tandoori chicken as the flagship of Indian food, including on the subcontinent itself; it even has a musical written singing its praises.In the United Kingdom alone, Marks & Spencer, the famous English retailer, claims to sell 18 tons a week of the chicken in Tikka Masala Sandwiches, while 23 million servings a year are sold at Indian restaurants. Sainsburys, another retailer, sells 1.6 million dishes every year, and stocks 16 different products containing what is affectionately...