I fell in love with chicken tikka masala in London, where I lived briefly years ago. It topped every most-popular dish list, which prompted former British foreign secretary Robin Cook to name it the United Kingdom’s national dish.
Chicken tikka masala is a pumpkin-colored mixture of marinated chicken pieces simmered in a spicy, creamy tomato sauce. It isn’t exactly pretty — you can hardly see the chicken for the sauce — but that just makes it even more endearing.
It’s the most popular dish at D’Guru restaurant (also known as Guru the Caterer) in Somerville and downtown Boston, take-out spots with a few small tables. Their version of chicken tikka masala is spot on. But when the food comes — even if you’ve announced that you’re grabbing one of the seats — it’s in a sturdy brown bag as if you were taking it out. Breads just off the griddle are wrapped in foil. Crisp dumplings are tucked into white Chinese take-out boxes. Get everything out of them immediately before it suffocates.
Samosas have just come out of a fat bath and they’re piping hot with wrappers that practically crackle when you bite into them. One stuffed with mildly hot potatoes and peas is pretty wonderful. Paratha, a whole-wheat flatbread, is delicious filled with paneer, the fresh white cheese used in South Asian cuisines.
The chicken tikka masala is simmered in a sweet, mildly hot, tomato-based sauce that is just-right creamy rich with a beautiful rosy color. Tender chunks of chicken have not been cooked in a tandoor (or on a grill), as they sometimes are at other establishments, but sauteed first, so they don’t dry out before going into the sauce. A full dinner (a big bargain at $11.99) comes with rice seasoned with cumin and cardamom seeds, chapati, tender whole-wheat flatbread with soft folds, and a vegetable. There’s a long list that you can order as your vegetable, but if sambhar is on the menu, get that. Yellow lentils are cooked with mustard seeds, curry leaves, and chunks of cauliflower and carrot until the lentils collapse into a puree.
Guru the Caterer was opened in Somerville in 2008, and a year later in Boston, by Pushpinder Bhetia. Riyaz Shaikh, who had been at Bombay Classic Indian Cuisine in Arlington, bought the places from Bhetia in 2015. Shaikh attributes chicken tikka masala’s popularity to the number of South Indian-Americans who frequent his shop.
The origin of the specialty is unclear. Some say it comes from Punjab in northern India, but the dish as it’s made now was apparently brought to the Indian region from the United Kingdom. Tikka indicates that marinated pieces of meat or veggies are cooked on skewers; masala is the word for the mix of spices. The dish took root in Great Britain after the Partition of India in the late 1940s with the influx of South Asians and the growing number of curry houses in the country.
Glasgow residents claim one of their chefs invented the dish, but many British towns also say they’re the originators. Curries like this, in which meat is initially cooked in conical tandoors, go back thousands of years in India.
Today in Britain, chicken tikka masala is sold in the prepared foods section of supermarkets. You can also buy spicy tikka masala mayo bottled by Heinz. Brits simply call the specialty CTM. That’s what was written on my Guru receipt. A dish with its own acronym. How charming is that? 1295 Broadway, Somerville, 617-718-0078; 187 Devonshire St., Boston, 617-542-7100, www.guruthecaterer.com.
Sheryl Julian can be reached at sheryl.julian@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @sheryljulian.
