AS A RESTAURANT owner in Glasgow seeks to patent chicken tikka masala, Indian chefs and culinary experts have dismissed his claim of having invented the mouth-watering dish as "preposterous".
Ahmed Aslam Ali, a chef whose family owns the Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow, recently said he invented the spicy curry in the 1970s. The claim prompted Scottish MPs to seek European Union recognition through a "Protected Designation of Origin", which would put Glasgow’s chicken tikka masala on par with Parma’s Parmesan cheese or French ‘Champagne’.
The Daily Telegraph yesterday quoted Zaeemuddin Ahmad, a chef at Delhi’s Karim Hotel which was established by the last chef of last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, as saying that the recipe was passed down through the generations in his family.
"Chicken tikka masala is an authentic Mughlai recipe prepared by our forefathers who were royal chefs in the Mughal period. Mughals were avid trekkers and used to spend months altogether in jungles and far off places. They liked roasted chicken with spices," he told the paper.
Himanshu Kumar, the founder of Eating Out in Delhi, a food group which celebrates New Delhi’s culinary heritage, also ridiculed Glasgow’s claim. "Patenting the name chicken tikka masala is out of question. It has been prepared in India for generations. You can’t patent the name, it’s preposterous."
Rahul Verma, an expert on street food, said he first tasted the dish in 1971 and that its origins were in Punjab.
"It is basically a Punjabi dish not more than 40-50 years old and must be an accidental discovery."
