I love Indian food. It’s expensive to eat it out here, and Nathan won’t go with me, but he will eat it if I make it at home. We DO go to a restaurant close to my parents house to get naan made fresh because theirs is better than anything that I can make. I think they think we’re crazy only getting naan, but oh well. I had leftover yogurt in the fridge I needed to use up, so this was dinner tonight. The recipe is a combo of a couple of different recipes from Epicurious plus a little of what I had in the house. The skin is so tasty!
Tandoori Style Chicken
6 chicken thighs
Spice mixture:
2 tsp. each paprika, tumeric, garam masala, ground cumin
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground cardamom
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
a few saffron threads
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. cayenne (you can use more–I love it, but it hurts my stomach so I use 1/2 of whatever a recipe tells me)
Yogurt marinade:
1/2 onion grated
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 T grated ginger
1 cup of plain whole milk yogurt
2 T lemon juice (I had half of a grapefruit on hand–I’m sure you could use lime too)
Mix the spices and the salt and rub onto the chicken. Let it sit while you combine the ingredients for the yogurt marinade. Put the chicken in the yogurt marinade, turn to coat and let sit at least a couple of hours in the fridge, and overnight is even better. Preheat oven to 500°F. Line 2 rimmed baking sheets with foil; place cooling racks on prepared baking sheets. Using slotted spoon, transfer chicken thighs to 1 sheet and chicken breasts to second sheet, spacing pieces slightly apart (make sure that chicken pieces do not touch and are covered in yogurt mixture). Bake until chicken is cooked through, about 30 minutes for breasts and about 40 minutes for thighs.
I served this with some naan that Nathan graciously got from our place and cucumber salad.
Cucumber salad:
2 nice firm cucumbers, peeled
1 shallot, diced (or about 1/4 of a purple onion)
1 stalk of celery, diced (if you have any of the greens on the stalk, even better)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 T tasty vinegar (I used moscatel, but any white or red wine or sherry would be good)
2 T neutral oil (olive can be a little strong for the cucumbers, I think, so I used sunflower–canola is good too)
S&P to taste
Slice the cucumbers as thinly as you can. If you have a mandoline, it will make quick work of this task. Put the cucumbers in a bowl and sprinkle with a good pinch of salt. Let them sit until quite of bit of the water has been drawn out of them. Drain them. Combine all the other ingredients with the drained cucumbers.
