This creation stems from the love my wife and I have for Chicken Tikka Masala from a restaurant called India Palace. She wanted it for her birthday but we couldn't travel to the restaurant this year, so we found a copycat recipe on www.northandmouth.com blog. That is the recipe we used as the base, we just half everything, for making a pizza out of a traditional Indian dish. It was fun to make and even better to eat! Hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Supplies

Chicken Marinade:

Two chicken breast (chopped into bite size pieces)
1/2 cup of plain whole milk yogurt
1 TBLS lemon juice
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground red pepper
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp methi powder (fenugreek)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground ginger
two gallon size Ziploc type bags

Sauce:

1/2 TBLS unsalted butter
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 jalapeno, chopped
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp methi powder (fenugreek)
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 can tomato sauce
1 TBLS tomato paste
1/2 - 2 cups heavy whipping cream (Per your preference of heat)
Sauce pan

Pizza/ baking sheet

Deep large diameter pan

Cornmeal

Parchment Paper

Your favorite pizza dough (either store bought or homemade)

Optional:

Basmati Rice (cooked with cumin seeds and cinnamon stick)
Naan Dough (we use the recipe from ohsweetbasil.com)

Step 1: Marinade Assembly

The chicken needs to be marinaded at least one hour before baking. We like to marinade the chicken all day.

In the morning cut the thawed chicken into bite size pieces and place into one gallon size Ziploc bag. Mix the marinade ingredients together and pour into the bag with the chicken. Close the bag and massage the marinade to cover the chicken. Then place the bag upside down into the second gallon Ziploc bag so the zipper of the bag with the chicken is at the bottom of the second bag. This insures no spills will happen in your refrigerator.

Place the Ziploc bags into the refrigerator tell you are ready to bake the kitchen for dinner (usually 7-8 hours of refrigeration time).

Step 2: Cooking Time!

The next few steps will all happen kind of simultaneously, so if your good at multi tasking this is your time to shine!

Pull the marinaded chicken out of the refrigerator about 30 minutes before you want to bake your pizza. Preheat your oven to what ever your dough needs for it to bake, ours was 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a deep large diameter pan place the marinated chicken and cook tell the chicken is cooked through.

In a sauce pan place your butter, chopped jalapeno and garlic and saute until fragrant, but not brown or burnt. Then add in the dry sauce ingredients, tomato sauce and tomato paste. Let simmer and cook on medium-low tell its heated thoroughly. This is were you can choose how spicy you want the sauce. If you want a milder sauce then add 1 1/2-2 cups of heavy cream, for medium 1/2-1 cups heavy cream and for hot don't add any heavy cream. Its all up to your preference. We usually do 1/2 -1 cups mostly for my wife, but if truth be told I like it as spicy as I can get it.

Step 3: Assembly and Baking

While your chicken is cooking and your sauce is simmering you can prep your dough and pan for baking.

We've already pre-heated the oven so now you need to get your pizza pan or if your like us we use a cookie sheet. Place a piece of parchment paper down and sprinkle some cornmeal on top of the parchment. This helps the dough not to stick to the pan.

Now the assembly:

1st: Unroll your store bought dough or place your homemade dough on the cornmeal covered parchment.

2nd: Slather the dough with your sauce. There is a preference here too, put as much sauce as you would like down on the dough. My wife generally likes light sauce but what I put down on this pizza was a good amount.

3rd: Arrange the cooked chicken over the sauce

4th: Sprinkle just a light amount of mozzarella cheese on to to hold everything together.

Lastly: Bake for 15-20 minutes at 425 degrees Fahrenheit. When cooked thoroughly and the crust is brown on the bottom take out and ENJOY!

Optional: Very Taste Option!

The ingredients made enough for two pizzas. My wife wanted to make a Naan crust and she made some Basmati Rice to sprinkle onto the pizza just under the cheese layer. If your ambitious and want to try that option it was really tasty and had an authenticity to it.

You will want to make the Naan dough ahead of time according to the recipe but don't cook it. Once the dough is made and ready for baking roll it out and place onto a prepared pan that has the parchment and cornmeal ready; our recipe was from ohsweetbasil.com. My wife uses garlic, oil, a cinnamon stick and cumin seeds in the rice to give it a more flavorful experience. I think she got her rice recipe from googling "how to make restaurant perfect basmati rice", it gave her a recipe from indiaphile.info. She added the extra spices from paying attention to the rice at India Palace restaurant.

Bake at the same temperature (425 degrees Fahrenheit) for approximately the same time (15-20 minutes).