Chicken Changezi

Chicken Changezi is a creation of Old Delhi's restaurant kitchens around the Jama Masjid quarter, where it is closely tied to the eateries that popularised it in the latter twentieth century. Its name is widely said to honour the 13th-century Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan — "Changez" in Delhi pronunciation — but this is folklore: Genghis Khan never reached Delhi, turning back at the Indus, and the rich spiced gravy bears no relation to the meat-and-dairy diet of the Mongol steppe. A more plausible account links the name to the 1957 Hindi film Changez Khan and the Old Delhi wrestler-restaurateur nicknamed Changez Pehelwan; either way the dish itself is modern Mughlai, not medieval.

Chicken in a dense, brick-orange sauce that clings rather than pours, far punchier than butter chicken. The first taste is tomato cooked down hard, then butter and cashew rounding it, with whole-spice heat — black cardamom, clove, pepper — and a deep fried-onion sweetness. A faint tandoor-smoke note runs underneath in the best versions. Eaten by tearing soft khameeri roti and dragging it through; a final ribbon of cream cuts the intensity. If it tastes only sweet, the spicing was held back.

The body of the sauce comes from a long tomato reduction bound with cashew paste, which thickens and smooths it the way it does in korma; butter and cream go in late and off a rolling boil, because an acidic tomato base will curdle dairy if it is boiled hard. Whole spices are bloomed in fat first so their fat-soluble aromatics carry through the gravy, and fried onion (birista) adds both sweetness and colour. Many cooks finish with dhungar — a lump of charcoal smoked under a lid with a little ghee — to lay a tandoor-like smoke over the dish.