I have loved Indian food ever since I was a kid, when, as a picky eater on a family vacation to England, I subsisted almost entirely on a diet of CTM – chicken tikka masala, the national dish of post-colonial Britain. This Anglo-Indian hybrid of grilled marinated chicken in a spiced tomato cream sauce is hardly authentic Indian food – you won’t find it in most self-respecting Indian cookbooks, and in fact today I live up the street from any Indian restaurant that goes by the defiantly anti-tikka (and painfully awkward) name of “No Tomatoes!” But for me, CTM was a gateway drug that led me down the delicious and aromatic path to kormas, dosas, puris, saags, biryanis, and heck, even the odd kofteh.
