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The city
famous for, among other things, football, deep-fried Mars Bars and
Billy Connolly, is now bidding to add chicken tikka masala to the
list of their traditional national dishes.
Mohammed Sarwar, Labour MP for
Glasgow Central, has tabled a Commons motion calling for Parliament
and the EU to recognise that it was invented by the proprietor of the
Shish Mahal restaurant, Ali Ahmed Aslam, in the Seventies.
It is claimed Mr Aslam invented
the recipe after a diner complained his chicken was too dry. Mr Aslam
told the Scotsman newspaper: "We could call it the 'Glasgow
chicken tikka masala'. "We consider ourselves to be
Glaswegians first and Scottish second so we are proud to have
invented it here."
Seven Labour MPs including
Glasgow South West MP Ian Davidson have signed Mr Sarwar's motion,
which also calls for the city to be given EU Protected Designation of
Origin of the dish.
COMMENT :
from
Peter Grove, editor & food historian
The origins of chicken tikka
masala are very close to my heart as I have been answering questions
on the subject for over 25 years and as far as I am concerned there
is no evidence that the dish was invented sometime in the seventies
by Mr Aslam at the Shish Mahal and plenty of evidence that it was not.
Facts :
1/
The earliest claim for the invention of chicken tikka masala comes
from the family of Sultan Ahmed Ansari who opened the Taj Mahal in
Glasgow in 1954 and offered a curry feast for just over 3 shillings.
This claim is made by his daughter Noreen and he sold the restaurant
after 30 years to Mr Ahmed of Shish Mahal who now claims the
invention of CTM also.
2/
The abbreviation CTM was invented by journalist Colleen Grove in an
article in Spice n'Easy magazine in 1994.
3/
Top restaurateur Amin Ali of London's Red Fort states that the dish
was on the menu at the restaurant he joined as a lowly waiter in 1974
and remembers it because it was one he had previously never heard of.
4/
The current accepted history states that the origins come from
British customers ordering chicken tikka and complaining it was too
dry - where is our gravy? The Bangladeshi chef then took it away,
added a tin of Campbells condensed soup and some spices and lo and
behold the dish was born.
THIS
IS PURE URBAN LEGEND.
It was made up as a bit of fun at
a bar in Chelsea by the then editor of Tandoori, Iqbal Wahhab and me
as editor of The Real Curry Restaurant Guide who had just completed
and published a survey on the subject, and has become accepted fact
all over the world. It is strange that part of the claim for
authenticity by Mr Alsam includes part of this made-up explanation.
5/
Mrs Balbir Singh included a recipe for Shahi Chicken Masala in her
book 'Indian Cookery' first published in 1961 although it was not
included until the second version in 1975.
6/ Chicken
tikka masala was actually a development from chicken makhni (butter
chicken) invented in 1949 by Moti Mahal in New Delhi after the
invention of the first restaurant tandoor in that restaurant by
Kundan Lal Gujral the year before. The tandoor (and chicken tikka)
was on the menu at the famous Veeraswamy in 1959 and an advertisement
in a programme for the London Palladium pantomime, Cinderella
starring Cliff Richard in 1966 by The Gaylord in Mortimer Street
featured early tandoor dishes.
7/
Many years ago top food writer Charles Campion referred to CTM as
"a dish invented in London in the Seventies so that the ignorant
could have gravy with their chicken tikka".
Becoming
a Joke:
The claim for protection for CTM
from Glasgow as brought forth a strong reaction from India of all
places - the spiritual home of curry that has always proclaimed that
chicken tikka masala was unknown there and is an unauthentic British invention.
According to The Telegraph,
Zaeemuddin Ahmad, a chef at Delhi's Karim Hotel, which was
established by the last chef of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah
Zafar, claims the recipe had been passed down through the generations
in his family! "Chicken tikka masala is an authentic Mughlai
recipe prepared by our forefathers who were royal chefs in the Mughal
period. Mughals were avid trekkers and used to spend months
altogether in jungles and far off places. They liked roasted form of
chickens with spices," he said.
Rahul Verma, Delhi's most
authoritative expert on street food, said he first tasted the dish in
1971 and that its origins were in Punjab. "It's basically a
Punjabi dish not more than 40-50 years old and must be an accidental
discovery which has had periodical improvisations," he said.
Himanshu Kumar, the founder of
Eating Out in Delhi, a food group which celebrates Delhi's culinary
heritage, ridiculed Glasgow's claim. "Patenting the name
chicken tikka masala is out of the question. It has been prepared in
India for generations. You can't patent the name, it's preposterous,"
he said.
There are too many claims and
counter-claims for the invention of chicken tikka masala to waste
space on but none of them have, to date, been substantiated and the
Shish Mahal claim from Glasgow, three time winner of the title Curry
Capital of Britain, is, regrettably, totally fanciful and will not,
hopefully, be entertained any further for 'protected status'.
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