Ahmed Aslam Ali will have been at the origin of a dish that has gone around the world. The Scottish chef, who claimed the invention of chicken tikka masala, died Monday at the age of 77, according to the Facebook page of his restaurant in Glasgow.
Creamy and moderately spicy, this curry recipe was born in the 1970s in the kitchens of the “Shish Mahal” restaurant, before becoming one of the most widely served dishes in the United Kingdom.
A sauce “based on yogurt, cream and spices”
“Chicken tikka masala was invented in our restaurant, we used to make chicken tikka (grilled marinated chicken), but one day a customer said ‘I would like some sauce with this, it’s a bit dry “”, said in 2009 Ahmed Aslam, originally from Pakistani Punjab. “So since that date we have cooked it with a sauce based on yoghurt, cream and spices. »
“The restaurant was his life,” said his nephew Andleeb Ahmed. He had lunch there every afternoon. “The chefs used to make him a curry,” he said, recalling that last year at Christmas he had visited his perfectionist uncle in hospital, who had told him at the end of his visit that he ‘should be at work’.
A “genuine British national dish”
Despite the difficulty of proving absolutely where this dish was born, generally considered an adaptation of curry to Western taste, a Scottish local MP, Mohammad Sarwar, had at that time taken steps to have chicken tikka masala recognized as a specialty. local. In 2001, the former British Foreign Minister Robin Cook described this curry as “a true British national dish” and “a perfect illustration of the way in which Great Britain absorbs and adapts external influences”.