Chicken Makhani

Ingredients

• 2 pounds of (bony) chicken
• 1 cup yogurt (dahi)
• 1" piece of ginger
• 8 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp lime juice
• 4" stick of cinnamon
• 8 cloves
• 8 cardamoms
• 10 black peppercorns
• 1 tbsp oil
• 2¼ pounds tomatoes
• 1 tsp dried fenugreek leaves (optional)
• 1 tbsp white pepper powder (essential)
• 1 ounce cream (optional but recommended for a touch of class)
• 1 !!pound!! butter (you can get away with 0.6 lb if 1 lb is too much)
• salt to taste if you use yellow butter, then scale down the salt accordingly. If you use white butter, then you will need more salt.
• coriander (cilantro): optional topping.

Directions

1. Clean chicken and remove the skin.
2. Make a smooth paste of yogurt, garlic, ginger, lime juice, cinnamon, cloves, cardamoms, peppercorns and the oil.
3. Marinate the chicken in this for 6 hours.
4. Bake the chicken in a preheated oven for 10 minutes at 250°F (130°C). Put it aside.
5. We need to get a tomato sauce.
6. Cut tomatoes, put 'em in a pan (no water) and boil.
7. When the quantity has dropped by half, strain through a fine sieve.
8. What comes out of the sieve is the tomato sauce (this is hard work with a clumsy sieve).
9. Take a pan, start heating the sauce, add the butter.
10. When the butter is melted, add the white pepper powder, salt, fenugreek leaves and cream.
11. Mix the chicken pieces into this sauce.
12. You may like chopped coriander (cilantro) as topping.
13. Serve hot.
14. This works best with good rice (i.e. basmati).