Butter Chicken at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget

Butter Chicken at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

Butter plus warm Indian spices always sounds good to me when I order butter chicken at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California. 

There is more to butter chicken than butter and spices, which merits some sleuthing for ingredients and cooking techniques. 

To make butter chicken, you start with Indian tandoori chicken, which is a dish all by itself. Tandoori chicken is marinated in yogurt along with ginger, garlic, garam masala (curry powder), red chili powder, turmeric, and dried fenugreek leaves (these have an onion-like flavor). Tandoori chicken is marinated overnight and is then roasted. (Recipe information source: www.indianhealthyrecipes.com) 

Tandoori chicken is the building block for butter chicken Julie Sahni writes in Classic Indian Cooking. Sahni notes that Indian cooks often use leftover tandoori chicken to make butter chicken. 

Once you have the tandoori chicken, Sahni advises cooks to cut it into pieces. Then, she puts tomatoes, green chiles, and ginger into a blender to make a tomato purée. Sahni’s recipe calls for browning the tandoori chicken in butter and browning cumin and paprika in the leftover butter once the chicken has been removed. 

Sahni next places the tomato purée in the pan and lets it simmer before adding salt, cream, and chicken pieces in her recipe. Before serving butter chicken, Sahni’s recipe calls for adding a large bunch of chopped coriander (cilantro) to the dish to add a fresh tang to offset the rich butter. 

Butter chicken is a perfect buffet dish and tastes great with naan flatbread studded with licorice-flavored anise seeds. A perfect place to try butter chicken is at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Saag Chana at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget

Saag Chana at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

Saag chana masala (spinach chickpea curry) at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California is a delicious, vegetarian dish that merits a try for nutritional content, too. 

Saag chana is made by caramelizing onions in ghee (clarified butter) and then adding fresh ginger and garlic according to the Ministry of Curry website I used as a reference. 

After that, chopped tomato, turmeric, red chili powder, and cumin are added to the onions. You then add water for simmering before adding cooked chickpeas and spinach. To finish the dish, you add garam masala (curry powder) according to the Ministry of Curry website. 

The result is delicious with white rice or naan flatbread studded with licorice-flavored anise seeds. When you add saag chana’s ingredients together, they provide a vitamin boost as well: 

For 1 cup of the following ingredients, I found the following percentages of recommended daily allowances for vitamins in the main ingredients: 

-spinach: 

-potassium – 4% 

-vitamin C – 14% 

-iron – 4% 

-magnesium – 6%

-vitamin A – 64% 

-chickpeas (garbanzo beans): 

-iron – 4% 

-vitamin B6 – 5%

-magnesium - 3% 

-tomatoes: 

-vitamin C – 23% 

-potassium – 8% 

-vitamin A – 5% 

(Nutrition information from medicalnewstoday.com and USDA – US Department of Agriculture websites)  

Saag chana masala at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California is a tasty, vegetarian meal that might appeal to spinach lovers and chickpea lovers alike. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Aloo Gobi at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget

Aloo Gobi at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

The antioxidant powerhouse called aloo gobi at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California is similar to korma, a braised vegetable dish, which dates back to the Mughal Dynasty in India according to Julie Sahni in Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking. 

Basically, aloo gobi is made up of sliced cauliflower and potatoes cooked in a tomato sauce flavored with fennel, coriander, and ground almonds among other ingredients. 

The dish starts out like many Indian dishes with onion being caramelized in oil and seasoned with garlic, fresh ginger, coriander, fennel, pepper, and turmeric. 

Once the onions and seasonings have cooked, a cook adds tomato purée to the mixture along with water, sliced cauliflower, and sliced potatoes and lets the mixture simmer for 30 minutes. At the end of cooking, cumin powder or garam masala (curry powder) is stirred in for additional flavor. 

The huge antioxidant in this dish is Vitamin C along with significant amounts of other nutrients, notably: 

Percentage of recommended daily nutrients in one cup – 

-Cauliflower: 

-potassium – 50%

-dietary fiber – 48% 

-vitamin C – 472% 

-vitamin B6 – 55% 

-Potatoes: 

-potassium – 15% 

-vitamin C 30% 

-vitamin B6 – 10% 

-Tomatoes: 

-Vitamin C – 28% 

(Nutrition information sources: USDA – US Department of Agriculture, Potatoes USA.com, and healthline.com) 

It is easy to dwell on the outstanding antioxidant benefits of aloo gobi, but the taste just makes you think of how delicious the dish is.

I love ordering aloo gobi from Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California for an out-of-the-ordinary lunch that is really good for you and vegan, too. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Coconut Curry Shrimp at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget

Coconut Curry Shrimp at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

Shrimp lovers might like the spicy, sweet coconut curry shrimp at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California for a lunch treat or delicious dinner over plain white rice. Highly seasoned coconut milk turns into a poaching curry gravy for this shrimp dish. 

To give an idea of what coconut curry shrimp tastes like I looked up a similar recipe for shrimp poached in coconut milk with fresh herbs in Classic Indian Cooking by Julie Sahni. 

In this recipe, onions are caramelized in oil with garlic, fresh ginger root, green chiles (amount may vary), turmeric, and ground coriander added to the onions and cooked for several minutes. 

Sweet coconut milk is added to these spices and allowed to thicken into a curry gravy. Fresh, peeled, and deveined shrimp are then added to the coconut curry and are allowed to poach until cooked. When the coconut curry is done, it is served over white rice. 

Coconut curry shrimp comes from the southwestern coastal state of Kerala, India according to Julie Sahni in Classic Indian Cooking, which gives Salinas residents and visitors a chance to try delicious Indian regional food at Avatar Indian Grill. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Mushroom Masala at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget

Mushroom Masala at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

The mushroom masala at Avatar Indian Grill is a spicy and creamy mushroom-tomato gravy curry that tastes great with plain white rice and naan flatbread studded with licorice-flavored anise seeds on the side. 

Recipes are restaurant secrets, so explaining why you like a dish requires both a little detective work and discretion about what you write about in a review. 

For example, I really like the spice combinations used at Avatar Indian Grill, but know they are secret. So, to give an idea of what the seasoning mushroom masala tastes like at Avatar Indian Grill, I turned to the cookbook Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking by Julie Sahni for a recipe for mushrooms sautéed with onion, ginger, garlic, green chiles, and turmeric used for seasoning. This recipe approximates what Avatar Indian Grill uses to season their mushroom masala. 

In an online recipe for mushroom masala, sliced mushrooms are sautéed with seasoning with tomato purée added to the masala, which is finished with cream or cashew milk according to the ministryofcurry.com website which is what Avatar Indian Grill appears to do as well. 

The taste of spicy and savory mushroom masala at Avatar Indian Grill makes the mushrooms taste like filling meat. 

Mushrooms provide several health benefits such as having: 

-B vitamins that help break down carbohydrates and transport nutrients throughout the body 

-antioxidants that help remove free radicals from the body that can cause cancer 

-vitamin D (found in white mushrooms) that helps build and maintain healthy bones. 

(Note: I found nutrition information on ministryofcurry.com, webmd.com, and mayoclinic.org websites.) 

Mushroom lovers might enjoy the spicy twist to one of their favorite foods in mushroom masala at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California. 

(Note: Mushrooms grow in the woods, but can also be cultivated in caves.)

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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No-Bake Fruit Pie Recipe by Ruth Paget

No-Bake Fruit Pie Recipe by Ruth Paget 

For 6 People 

Ingredients: 

-1 pre-baked pie shell made with butter not lard or 1 graham cracker crust 

-3 or 4 cups of chopped soft fruit such as strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blue berries, cherries, or peaches 

-1 scoop vanilla ice cream or 4 cups whipped cream 

Steps: 

1-Fill pie shell with chopped fruit and top with ice cream or whipped cream.

(A Rosevale Farm Recipe) 

Source: Jeanette Hodgson, mother of Winifred Sawle – Arena, Wisconsin 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Pull Candy Recipe by Ruth Paget

Pull Candy Recipe by Ruth Paget 

For 24 Candy Pieces 

Ingredients: 

-2 ½ cups sugar 

-1/2 cup water 

-1 tablespoon vinegar 

-2 or 3 drops of peppermint, winter green mint, or vanilla 

Steps:

1-Boil sugar, water, and vinegar until you can pick up a glob with a spoon when you drop some of the sugar mixture in water. 

2-Pour boiled syrup onto a buttered marble slab or pan. Add a few drops of flavoring.

3-As the syrup begins to cool, lift the edges and drop them into the center of the syrup with heat-resistant gloves. 

4-When the candy is cool enough to handle, pick it up and pull it back and forth until it becomes stiff. 

5-Pull candy into a long piece and cut it with scissors into bite-size pieces.

(A Rosevale Farm Recipe) 

Source: Winifred Sawle – Arena, Wisconsin 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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