Butter Chicken of the Woods

These photos just don’t do this dish justice! What looks like just a “blah”, brown-coloured meal is actually so delicious it is now my favourite new way of cooking with chicken of the woods mushrooms! If you are a lover of Indian cuisine and, like me, always thought it would be impossible to make it as good as you’d get at a fancy Indian restaurant, or, even better, a street side shack on a busy, rickshaw blaring street in any town in India, you will be surprised at how easy it is to replicate those delicious flavours and also make it into a vegetarian dish by substituting the chicken for mushrooms. And thanks to the meaty texture of chicken of the woods you really don’t even notice that it’s not actually real chicken!

The recipe does call for a couple of exotic spices, garam masala and tandoori masala, which are impossible to find in rural, small town Pennsylvania but I was happy to discover that they are just a mix of a collection of spices that you probably already have in your cupboard. I have included recipes for these as well, I now keep these pre-made spices handy so I can whip up this tasty meal in no time at all.

Sauté the chicken of the woods until golden brown

Marinate the chicken of the woods in the tandoori masala sauce

Cook the chicken of the woods in the butter sauce and add the cream

Palak Paneer

I like to make the butter chicken accompanied by my favourite vegetarian Indian dish, Palak Paneer, creamy spinach with Indian-style cheese mixed in, my go-to meal when I traveled through India as a vegetarian many moons ago… I first made it when my second attempt at making cottage cheese failed and it came out rubbery instead of crumbly. It definitely didn’t look like cottage cheese but it did remind me of the cheese they use for Palak Paneer so I looked up a recipe and was surprised at how easy it was to make. Together with the butter chicken, rice and some home-made naan bread it makes for a nourishing, rich and totally satisfying Indian feast. The western version of this is sometimes called Saag Paneer, saag meaning it is made with other leafy greens, rather than spinach. I have made it with a mixture of kale and Swiss chard and it worked equally well!