“You mean Chicken Korma?” the stout man asked in his thick Indian accent from behind the host stand.

“No, just the Korma sauce,” I replied. “I want just the sauce and I’ll put my own organic chicken in it.”

“Korma is all together in a big pot with the tomatoes, cream and other ingredients.” He looked utterly perplexed which utterly perplexed me.

“I know,” I said, “can I buy a container of it? I used to buy it every week at an Indian restaurant by my house in Scottsdale.”

“No one has ever asked for this before. I don’t think I can sell it that way; it would probably be thirty dollars,” he said as he looked at me suspiciously. I think at this point he was just trying to get rid of me because he was in the middle of his lunch rush and I threw a wrench into the works with this seemingly troublesome and outrageous request.

“Thirty dollars for a couple servings of Korma sauce?” I asked surprised.

“Well or fifteen or twenty,” he said looking around bewildered.

“If it’s really good Korma, fifteen is okay.” I said wondering if I sounded like I was bartering. “Is there someone you can ask, maybe the chef?”

He flitted away in the direction of the kitchen.

My husband and I love Chicken Korma and while I have tried and tried to make it and have come very close, it’s just not as delightfully Indian as when it comes from a good Indian restaurant.

I could see beyond a glass wall separating the entrance of the restaurant to the lunch buffet room where hungry customers mounded their plates with Indian culinary delights. Then entered an Indian man donning a tall white toque followed by the host. The chef began ladling something from the buffet table into a container as the host watched. The chef handed the man the container as they both laughed.

A minute later the man came out with a smile on his face and a bag that I hoped held a container of Korma.

“I completely over complicated this,” the man said with a smile. “I don’t know what I was thinking or why I made this so difficult.”

I laughed out loud. “It is soooo sweet of you to say that!”

“Here’s your Korma and it’s only four dollars, not thirty!” he said as he laughed and rolled his eyes. I put five dollars in a tip jar on the host stand.

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