Kashmiri Butter Chicken

from Ultimate Slow Cooker
by Sara Lewis,
published by Hamlyn, 2008.

Curry is always a tricky one in our house. I love anything spicy, ideally good and hot, but I’m happy to eat the more aromatic spicy things too. Robert loves curry as much as I do. It’s a joy when his brother Matt comes to stay and we get to indulge in fabulous spicy deliciousness thanks to Matt’s seemingly bottomless curiosity about the culinary world and enthusiasm for throwing himself into cooking eight to ten different things at once (often enhanced, it must be said, by ingredients he brings himself from the Great Metropolis, which are largely unavailable here in the depths of Nowhere). In the normal run of things though, curry is confined to when Robert and I are eating alone and one or other of us can bring ourselves to make the effort, and it very often involves a jar of curry paste, good quality curry paste, and with lots of extra goodies added to enhance it, but hardly the same as toasting and grinding your own spices, which is where Matt normally starts! The trouble is that our children seem to regard anything spicy with suspicion. I’m not entirely sure why. I certainly started out with good intentions, giving them many and varied foodstuffs when they were teeny. But somewhere along the line we seem to have ended up with the spag bol-pizza-sausages default child diet. 

So yesterday’s new recipe was likely to be a bit contentious. When asked what was for dinner, I told them the name of the dish, avoiding the c-word, but as the smell began to waft out of the slow cooker and through the house, someone said “Smells like curry” and I had to admit it. But still, I thought perhaps the case wasn’t hopeless. For all the heaps of carefully ground spices that had gone into it, it was definitely mild and aromatic rather than hot and spicy. And then there was the cream and toasted nuts added at the end. Surely these would appeal?

And...?

Everyone liked it, everyone had seconds, everyone said they wanted to have it again. I do wonder if Livia’s enthusiasm was not partly to do with being handed a chapatti and told she could eat with her fingers, but if that is a way to get her to be more adventurous, I’ll let her eat anything with her fingers.