TO-DIE-FOR TANDOORI CHICKEN

We Punjabi's are Tandoori Chicken freaks, you know papaji and tandoori chicken and peg-sheg :), all that!!! the association is so vivid haha!,so is the taste of this chicken, soft ,melt-in-the-mouth tender and sheer delight in every bite.Gagan loved it and declared it to be the best ever!

But after a hard day at work, do you really have the energy for making this kinda thing?, for this one- yessss, this is an incredibly easy way! the better part of the recipe can easily be done ahead of time, and from there on it hardly takes 15 minutes, I have a gas tandoor that I normally used for this, but that got too messy to clean up later, so I decided to adapt from David Lebovitz's Tandoori Chicken recipe, which turned out SOOOO beautifully!

INGREDIENTS-

• Fresh chicken-1 (about 850 gms)


• Thick yogurt-1 cup


• Fresh cream-2 tbsp


• Ginger paste-1 tbsp


• Garlic paste-1 tbsp


• Green chillies-2 ground


• Garam masala-1 tsp


• Lemon juice-1 tbsp


• Salt to taste


• a pinch of orange/red food colour


• oil for shallow frying

Method-

Wash chicken under running water very well, leave in a colander to drain.With a sharp knife make deep cuts in the chicken flesh so that the marinate can penetrate, add all the other ingredients and season, mix well in a large bowl, cover with cling film and leave to marinate for at least 2 hours or overnight like in below pic.

When you are ready to eat/serve, heat a heavy bottom pan and heat some oil for shallow frying, add the chicken pieces a few at a time, making sure that they are well coated with all that good marinade, fry for 15-20 minutes till golden and cooked through, serve with some onion salad and sprinkled with tangy chaat masala, oooh delicious!

Last night after writing this post, I remembered an old joke by Khushwant Singh, here it goes...

A Sardarji was lying on the railway tracks with a bottle of whiskey and some tandoori chicken, a passerby was curious to see what is going on so he asked the Sardarji that what is he doing, the Sardarji replied that he was fed up of his life and was going to commit suicide,"But then why the bottle of whikey and tandoori chicken?", "I DONT WANT TO DIE OF STARVATION TILL THE TRAIN COMES",replied the Sardarji!!!!:):)