Glaswegian chef Ali Ahmed Aslam, credited as the inventor of Chicken Tikka Masala, is dead at 77. Aslam, who moved to Scotland from Pakistan as a young boy and opened his restaurant in 1964, added a creamy mix of tomato sauce and yoghurt to a dish that a customer found too dry. The resulting blend of flavorsome South Asian tradition and picky Western vulgarity became a worldwide hit.
In an interview with the AFP news agency, he would later describe the moment he came up with one of Britain's favourite dishes.
"Chicken tikka masala was invented in this restaurant, we used to make chicken tikka, and one day a customer said, 'I'd take some sauce with that, this is a bit dry'," he recalled.
"We thought we'd better cook the chicken with some sauce. So from here we cooked chicken tikka with the sauce that contains yogurt, cream, spices.
"It's a dish prepared according to our customer's taste, usually they don't take hot curry, that's why we cook it with yogurt and cream."
