This is a bit of a spur of the moment thing, having to get rid of a large amount of JB's Bacon Rub I put together some pork ribs based on a recipe I found online, then having a huge amount of marinade left over I thought I may as well try to combine it with a balti masala that I had remaining. The result is a dry and thick curry that looks and smells very much the real deal. The flavour is fantastic to eat with naan. Really this one -- which for reference used the Toombs balti masala, but following the Chapman method -- reminded me of a really notable curry that I had once at a buffet meal at a university canteen, many years ago. For a long time I've been searching for that same scent, or at least wondering about it, not because it was the most amazing curry but because they had such a vast amount of it.

The BBQ marinade was done separately, the chicken done in the oven at high heat in the tandoori style. Then we mixed the chicken pieces into the curry very near to the end of cooking, to minimize the amount of flavour transference away from the pieces. I think that the fact that this ended up so characteristic is down to several factors: a lack of tomatoes (which are not used by Chapman), the relatively small amount of water (just half a mug), and a large amount of veg oil used during cooking, so much that I had to skim it off.

The marinade used BBQ sauce, bacon rub, porter ale, Mexican chile sauce, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, dark rum, mustard. Honestly the resulting flavour works very well, giving a strongly balti outer layer that's counterpointed by a warm sweetness once you bite into the chicken. It's quite a lot of effort for just a single dish, though, so I might save this one for a summer barbecue season. Once you make the marinade you can probably get a solid 3kg of meat out of it, provided you use it cannily.

This is one that, to me, clearly needs to be eaten with naan rather than rice. (This is something that I'm still just starting to develop intuitions about.)