Nuchi Nebu Nonka

You know how you sometimes start cooking with a very clear plan and a very calm mind – and then halfway through, you realise you’re incapable of leaving ‘good enough’ alone? That was me today.

I genuinely meant to make butter chicken. No twists. No ideas. Just the good, dependable kind that doesn’t ask questions and doesn’t surprise you. I even told myself, don’t overthink this.

I marinated the chicken – thighs, obviously – and let it sit while I did other things. I wasn’t watching the clock. I was in that comfortable space where you trust that things will be fine if you don’t interfere too much. The cooking started exactly as expected. Chicken browned, stepped aside. Butter melted. Onions softened. Ginger and garlic behaved themselves. Kasuri methi blended in along with other spices. The kitchen smelled right – reassuring, familiar, like muscle memory doing its job. At that point, I could’ve finished the dish with my eyes half-closed.

And then I didn’t.

I don’t know when it happens, this moment – but you’ll know it too. The pause. The glance at the shelf. The thought that says, ‘what if I just add this one thing?‘ Not because something is wrong, but because curiosity shows up uninvited.

So I reached for gochujang. And then, for some reason, red wine. I mixed them together, fully aware that this was not part of the original plan. I added it in and waited to see if the dish would judge me.

Well, it didn’t. My eyes gleamed, and my heart did a happy dance.

The sauce darkened, softened, became interesting. The wine lost its edge, the gochujang stopped being dramatic, and suddenly the butter chicken had depth it hadn’t asked for but seemed perfectly happy to accept.

I added the chicken back, let everything simmer, finished with butter – because some habits are sacred. Cream crossed my mind, but I skipped it. The dish felt complete without it. When I finally tasted it, it was still butter chicken. Comforting, familiar, unmistakable. But it had a little secret now. A quiet complexity. The kind you notice on the first bite but hits on the second.

I didn’t set out to experiment today. I just couldn’t resist taking a small detour. And honestly, if butter chicken can handle it, maybe I can too.