No butter chicken please, we are Indians!

Now the reason I wanna blog about this is because whenever any Canadian friends of mine start talking about Indian food, the only term it starts with is Butter Chicken.... and you wonder how all of India cuisine can be defined in one dish. This doesn't settle well with me at different levels. Mainly, because Butter Chicken is not my favorite dish (even though I converted to being a meat eater after coming to Canada but thats for a different time and post :) Also its not that I don't like Punjabi food but when I think of Punjabi food, things that come to my mind are Aloo paratha, suji halwa, and of course chana masala.  However I do admire the way Indian food has become famous in the name of Butter Chicken. And I do get why it became so famous outside India - because the butter makes the dish a mild version of the Indian Chicken curry.


To satiate my curiosity, I googled national dish of India , rightfully its khichdi! It has to be. :) Then I googled the National food of Canada and it is Poutine! Its the Canadian version of khichdi, made of french fries, cheese curds, topped with gravy and very comforting. However its more of a Quebec dish and I don't know how the rest of Canada feels about it. Then I googled the national dish of UK. Its .... Chicken Tikka Masala. I don't know how to react to that but I thought it would have been Fish and Chips. The pattern I see here is that the locals' response to the national dish is pretty different from what an outsider perceives.

As long as people like Indian food because they liked butter chicken, thats fine with me. But, no butter chicken please, we are Indians!