India's most popular curry: Butter chicken
Whether you love it or hate it, butter chicken – or murgh makhani as it's known in Hindi – is one of India's best-known and, indeed, loved dishes. Today, it may be a takeaway classic, but when 'butter chicken' first popped onto the Delhi scene in the middle of the 20th century, it was merely as an effort to use up leftover chicken. The humble beginnings: One cannot understand the origins of butter chicken without first delving into its culinary parent, tandoori chicken, the latter of which is thought to have first popped up in Peshawar, Pakistan 100 years ago . At the time, a young chef named Kundan Lal Gujral ender was experimenting with the tandoor, a clay oven that reaches soaring temperatures and, up until that point, was primarily used to cook bread. Wanting to expand his tandoor repertoire, Gujral began coating pieces of chicken with yogurt and spices, skewering them, then placing these sticks into the tandoor. He discovered that not only was this