Ali Ahmed Aslam, Inventor of Chicken Tikka Masala, Britain’s Favorite Curry, Passes away
Ali Ahmed Aslam with his signature dish - AFP
Ali Ahmed Aslam, who has died aged 77, was a Glasgow chef who claimed to have invented Britain’s favorite curry dish – chicken tikka masala.
Made of charcoal-baked chicken pieces slathered in a rich sauce, the recipe has become a classic on British restaurant menus and in the ready-meal aisle, though it is rarely cooked in Indian homes. There are many stories of its origins, some claiming that it is a Punjabi dish that has been revised over the centuries, others that it is essentially the same as butter chicken, said to have been created by Kundan Lal Gujral, a refugee from what is now Pakistan who moved to India during Partition at the end of British colonial rule. However, Aslam’s story was considered the most plausible.
“Mr Ali”, as he was known locally, claimed he invented it in the early 1970s when a regular customer at his Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow complained his chicken tikka was too dry and asked for some sauce. Aslam knocked up a quick sauce by adding cream and a can of tomato soup (which he had bought to eat while recovering from a stomach ulcer) to the spices in the pan.
The man, a bus driver, liked the pale reddish-yellow special so much that he brought his friends in to taste it, and eventually Aslam put the dish on the menu.
A plate of Chicken Tikka Masala as served at the Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow - AFP
Even before the birth of the internet, chicken tikka masala “went viral”, becoming a staple of Indian restaurants up and down the country. By 2001 Marks & Spencer was reported to be selling 18 tons of ready-made chicken tikka masala every week, while supermarket shelves stocked tikka masala-flavored products ranging from pizza to crisps.
Aslam’s invention came to represent the multicultural British identity. In 2001, when he was Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook called it the “British national dish” and a “perfect illustration” of how the UK adapted to external influences.
Indeed, both chicken tikka masala and balti, which was little known outside a small area of northern Pakistan until it was popularized in Birmingham, have now been exported to the sub-continent due to demand from British tourists.
“Imagine the royalties [Aslam] would have earned if he could have protected his intellectual property,” remarked Stephen Harris, chef-patron of The Sportsman in Seasalter, Kent, in The Daily Telegraph in 2018. “It would have been an even bigger hit than snail porridge.”
Ali Ahmed Aslam was born into a poor family in what became Pakistan on April 1 1945 and moved, aged 16, with his family to Glasgow, where his father, Noor Mohammed, founded what some claim was the city’s first Indian restaurant, Green Gates, in 1959.
Ali worked as a bus conductor before opening the Shish Mahal in Gibson Street, in the west end of Glasgow, in 1964. According to Lost Glasgow, a group dedicated to documenting the changing face of the city, “In those days, when the pubs shut at 10pm, going for a ‘Ruby’ [Ruby Murray – curry] was the only way to keep drinking. In its early days, the Shish even allowed customers to bring in their own ‘cairry-oots’.”
In 2009 Mohammad Sarwar, Labor MP for Glasgow Central, tabled a motion in the House of Commons calling for the EU to give “Protected Designation of Origin” status to Glasgow as the home of chicken tikka masala, alongside the likes of Champagne, Parma ham and Greek Feta cheese.
It is not known whether Aslam himself enjoyed the creamy dish. According to his son Asif Ali, “he was a simple man. He loved dal and vegetables.”
He was, though, proud of his adopted city. “He was Glaswegian and Scottish first,” his son said. “He was very, very proud of being Glaswegian, very, very proud of being Scottish, and it was very important to him.”
Aslam is survived by his wife, three sons and two daughters. – The Telegraph
