Now that Sujatha has convinced you that it is not un-American to NOT go shopping on Black Friday, I will add my bit by pursuading you that it is okay not to eat turkey on Thanksgiving. For the last couple of years, my two adult kids have given family Thanksgiving a miss, choosing to come home only at Christmas. The hassle of plane travel across the width of the nation (one kid on the east coast, the other on the west and we are in the mid-south of the country) proves too daunting. My husband and I often invite others who are without family in Houston to join us for Thanksgiving. When others are over for dinner, I feel compelled to cook a traditional meal of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and pies, a menu that I personally do not enjoy. This year we didn’t invite anyone nor did we accept invitations from others. It was just my husband and me. I cooked an Indian meal. Although I am a pretty decent cook, I do very little home cooking now that the kids no longer live at home. So, the few times in the year that I put together a festive meal, I enjoy the experience. I thought I would share one of my recipes with readers (mostly because I have no blogging ideas). For Indian cooking, I never follow recipes – it is more or less a haphazard process of throwing a pinch of this or a handful of that out of practice and prevailing mood. So, the recipe below may not be perfect but it will come close to what I would make at home. I am also simplifying the recipe a bit, leaving out marination and a couple of items from the spice mix.
The recipe may seem quite elaborate to the uninitiated. But if you prepare well in advance, it really is not that complicated. The biggest problem may be recognizing the right spices. Most of the spices mentioned below are available at the regular grocery stores under Spice Island or McCormick brands at nearly three times the price that you will find at ethnic food stores. The best option is to buy them in 4 – 8 oz packets in an Indian grocery store. That works out cheaper and if kept in tightly sealed containers, they will last a long time. And remember that the Indian cumin is not the same as Mexican comino. Cumin seeds are lighter and longer than comino and have a milder flavor.
Chicken Mughlai
This is a rich, flavorful and mild tasting chicken recipe that can serve as the main dish for a traditional Indian dinner. It can be served with plain or spiced (pilaf) long grain rice (Basmati) or with traditional Indian breads like Naan or Roti. Whole wheat fresh tortillas are a good substitute.
Fresh Ingredients:
4 large skinless chicken breasts with bones (or boneless, if your prefer) each cut into 2-3 pieces across the width
3 medium onions cut into eighths
10 cloves of garlic
fresh ginger root, peeled and coarsely chopped to make about two heaping tablespoons
1 tsp of fresh mint paste (or 1 tsp of dried mint leaves)
1.5 cups of plain non-sweet yoghurt (low fat yoghurt is okay)
2 Tsp each golden raisins and slivered almonds
1/3 cup vegetable oil
Spices:
one 3-inch cinnamon stick broken into four
6 pods of green cardamom
4-6 whole cloves
2 whole bay leaves
1 tsp. whole cumin seed and 1tsp. powdered cumin
1 tsp. cayenne pepper (2 tsp. if you can handle the heat)
1 heaping tsp Garam Masala (made up of 1/3 tsp each of ground cinnamon, ground cardamom and ground clove)
Salt to taste
Preparation:
Wash and pat dry the chicken.
Put the onion, garlic and ginger in an electric blender and mince into a coarse paste.
Heat the oil in a large, wide bottomed pot (preferably stainless steel) over medium-high heat.
When the oil is hot, put chicken pieces in a single layer and let them turn golden brown on both sides by turning them once.
Take the chicken out with a slotted spoon, draining the oil back into the pot and keep aside in a bowl. Repeat until all the pieces have been browned lightly.
Into the same hot oil, put in the whole cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, cumin and bay leaves.
When these start sputtering and turning brown in a few seconds, pour in the onion, garlic and ginger paste. Turn heat down to medium.
Stir for 4-5 minutes or until the paste is uniformly flecked with brown.
Add the salt, cayenne, mint paste and the cumin powder and keep stirring for a few more minutes until the oil starts to separate from the spice paste (be careful not to let the mixture burn at the bottom. If it starts to stick, add a few spoonfuls of water and scrape it off quickly).
Add a couple of tablespoons of the yogurt at a time to the spice paste and stir for 30 to 45 seconds each time until all the yogurt has been blended into the paste and the oil starts to separate once more from the mix.
Add the browned chicken pieces and their juices to the above sauce and coat the pieces well taking care all the while not to let the paste stick to the bottom. Add half cup (or 3/4 cup for a runnier sauce) of water.
Bring to a simmer. Turn the heat to low, cover and cook for about 10 minutes
Add raisins, almonds and the garam masala. Cover and cook for another 5 minutes or until chicken is done.
Remove from heat and serve hot after stirring well. Serves six. Leftovers can be frozen or refrigerated.
Accidental Blogger 
3 responses to “A Change of Taste”
That’s interesting. I wonder how many non-Christian families use Christmas as the default time to gather? Could be most; it just never occurred to me. In my family, Thanksgiving is the sine qua non family holiday, both because we don’t celebrate Christmas (there is an annual Greater Levine Family Hannukah shindig, but attendance, unlike at the Lesser Levine Family Thanksgiving, is not mandatory) and because of the near religious fervor of my father’s thankfulness for our good fortune as immigrants. Standard rituals include the “America’s been very good to us” paterfamilial speach; going around the table to say why we’re each thankful; etc. Then we eat gluttonously and make family decisions about charitable giving, a combination that strikes me as deeply American, for better and worse. We always eat turkey, a raw cranberry sauce and a cooked cranberry sauce, an “Indian pudding” recipe from my mother’s grandmother (grits and cheese and corn, basically), stuffing and dressing, sweet potatoes (this year, with a horseradish and molasses glaze), sometimes parsnips, a pumpkin pie and an apple pie, sometimes some other stuff. My mother, her aunt, my sister, and I make everything from scratch over the course of two days. The food is extremely tasty (we are excellent cooks, I think) though a nutritionist’s nightmare. We never shop on Black Friday. Given how unlike other Americans I feel through the Christmas season (I celebrate the holiday with my partner’s family, and enjoy their rituals, but always feel like a cultural outsider), the easy secular humanist themes and ideologically vague rituals of Thanksgiving have always seemed quite comforting.
That said, of course I agree it’s okay not to eat turkey (and I think that canned cranberry gloop should be banned). I will definitely try your recipe for Chicken Mughlai, a dish I once made in law school following a Madhur Jaffrey recipe (a fine recipe, though sometimes insufferable author). Before cooking again, though, I’m committing myself to fresh fruits and veggies for a couple weeks to expiate the nutritional sins of my Thanksgiving dinner.
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I’ve always preferred Christmas to Thanksgiving as a secular holiday. Probably because when I was a kid, opening Christmas gifts was terribly exciting, and it meant extended breaks from school. Today the main benefit of each is the family gathering–although I do prefer the excitement that I perhaps imagine in the public air as Christmas approaches (although the recent “war on Christmas” nonsense is extremely frustrating, and seems to have the potential to spoil that).
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Horseradish Sauce Recipe:
Ingredients: sour cream, grated onion, prepared horseradish, salt… view the recipe
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