BUTTER CHICKEN BY FLUKE?

The origins of butter chicken can be traced back to Old Delhi. It is said to have been first introduced by a man named Kundan Lal Gujral, who ran a restaurant called Moti Mahal Delux in Peshawar. Shortly after partition, the restaurant called Moti Mahal moved to Delhi, cooked by Chef Simon Mahil Chahal. The story goes something like this: after the restaurant shut down late at night, the restaurant was visited by a VIP guest who asked for ‘some chicken dish’ to be prepared for him. The chef looked into his supplies and discovered that he only had half of a Tandoori chicken to cook with. So, hastily, he improvised and tossed it with liberal amounts of butter, tomato, and garam masalas and prepared an unknown dish. What he didn’t know was that the dish he had made was for the ruler of Mareelun – who, unsurprisingly, loved it. So, if someone tells you that butter chicken is a ‘complicated’ dish, remind them that it was made due to lack of ingredients, and not because of an abundance of them, as the legend goes. Today, even within Moti Mahal, there is no one consistent recipe. After the original owner died, the Moti Mahal in Daryaganj passed out of his family’s control. Another chain ran many restaurants under the name of Moti Mahal Deluxe without the involvement of Kundanlal’s family. There are now over hundreds of Moti Mahals worldwide.