Chicken tikka masala represents our ability to embrace and enjoy a different culture to our own, to revel in new tastes, sensations and experiences. It also serves as a tasty reminder that English culture is rooted in a number of other cultures and that the Asian families who have settled here have had a massive beneficial influence on our cuisine, as well as our overall cultural identity.

It also speaks volumes about our ability to take something, adapt it and mould it – turning it into something tangible that suits us more as a nation.

The creation of chicken tikka masala, that favoured, gently flavoured staple Indo-Anglo curry dish full of exotic spices and gravy (hang on gravy?) was re-invented firstly because of our love of Indian food, and secondly because of yes - gravy. Our preferred taste for a gravy-like sauce saw the normally dry dish of chicken tikka morph into the sauce-laden chicken tikka masala. It’s not a dish you’d readily stumble across in India however, neither is a balti – another favourite British-inspired 'Indian' dish.

 

Chicken tikka masala and balti aside, 'curries' have been made for centuries on the Indian sub-continent both as a staple food and as highly sophisticated cuisine. There are vast regional variations and numerous well-defined culinary traditions, each possessing their own history and individual influences. The conquest of new lands, foreign colonisation, migrations and patterns of trade all influence how people cook and the different methods and ingredients they use.