Tandoori Chicken (without a Tandoori Oven) from The Curry Guy

The most important thing to say about this Tandoori Chicken recipe - and so this is why I'm saying it now, right at the start - is that, red food colouring or no red food colouring, the flavour is absolutely to-die-for.

Thank you, that is all.

Or - not quite all.  *chuckle*  Well, you wouldn't expect me not to rabbit on a bit about such a terrific recipe, now would you?

The thing is, that I've tried a number of recipes for oven-baked Tandoori Chicken and everything prior to this has left me with egg on my face, wishing I'd not have bothered.

What led me to have enough faith in this recipe to try it, was a) it came from www.greatcurryrecipes.net - or "Indian Food Recipes - made easy" which is a website written by @TheCurryGuy, Dan Toombs, and b) I've tried several of Dan's recipes - all of which have been brilliant.

I was determined, since I discovered that our butcher is now selling chicken legs as well as breast meat, that I would have a chicken leg - as I felt sure that the flavour would be greater and anyway, I prefer leg meat.  Son & heir likes the flavour of leg meat, but likes the sheer quantity of meat you get from the breast.  Hubby is a confirmed chicken breast devotee, as he hates any hint of fat on his meat.  So, as you can see, there was a very differing set of requirements here!

However, I bought two legs and two breasts of chicken - and we divided them up amongst us.  The legs I jointed into thighs and drumsticks on the reckoning that it would be far easier to handle that way around - and Tandoori Chicken was made to be eaten without knives and forks.

I will admit to going about the recipe all the wrong way - owing largely to an over keenness to get the chicken marinading.  I was so worried that I'd forget to marinade it!

I should have let the chicken sit in salt, food colouring and lemon juice before covering with the marinade, but in fact, I just included the salt and lemon juice in the marinade and let them sit in the lot.  I doubt this made a great deal of difference to the flavour, but it certainly made a difference to the colour, as all traces of food colouring were washed away by the yoghurt.  Still, it didn't make any difference at all to the flavours, which were just out of this world.


The oven roasting took a wee bit longer than I had anticipated - probably because my chicken pieces were massive - but it was worth giving it that extra 10 minutes to allow a little charring to appear.  Under the marinade, the chicken was softly moist and delicious while the marinade made us gasp a tiny bit from the chilli heat - oh boy, but it was good.

Everyone - son & heir included - completely loved this recipe.  The chilli aspect is something that is within your own control, in that if you aren't good with hot spicy food, then just don't use as many chillis.  So there's no need to not enjoy such a cracking recipe - just tone it down to your own taste.


I haven't reproduced the recipe here, as I followed it pretty much as it was written.  Do go to this link and see whether you fancy having a go at it - it honestly, couldn't be much easier - and the results are completely fabulous.


I served my Tandoori Chicken with some Saffron Rice and a little salad of red onion, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and coriander that had been dressed with a little lemon juice.


This was my recipe of the week - and I thoroughly recommend it to you!


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It's Tuesday's run-down on the menu plan for this week!

So, "what's the recipe for today, Jim?".  I'll bet not many of you recall that little bit of Radio 2 history.

I can well remember, when I was off school and feeling poorly, the sound of Radio 2 wafting through from the kitchen where my Mum was making a pie, or baking a cake, or just doing the dishes.  The programme was the Jimmy Young Show and he had a regular recipe slot, which was announced by "Raymondo", in a chipmunk style voice.  So, what's the recipe today, Jen?

Well, they go as follows :

Tues : Sausage casserole

Wed : Tandoori Chicken, saffron rice and salad

Thur : Ham & Apple Pie, parsnip mash, carrots & peas

Fri : Drunken Spaghetti

Sat : Trinidad Prawn Curry with rice

Sun : Chicken Normandy, Tenderstem broccoli, carrots & parsnips

Mon : Chilli con carne & rice.

I'm quite looking forward to that lot!

This evening's Sausage Casserole isn't just any old Sausage Casserole, oh no.  It's from the Good Food Channel's website and is from a recipe by Tana Ramsey.

Not a bad sausage casserole ...

Now both hubby and I have been known to produce a fairly good Sausage Casserole, but this one caught my attention because of its use of fennel, redcurrant jelly and balsamic vinegar in the mix.  Also, it has an interesting little savoury finish in that you mix up some whole grain mustard and creme fraiche (or cream) and drizzle it over the top.  Sounds like it could definitely hit the spot!

I'm not sure what to serve with it just yet, although I have almost settled upon some oven baked sweet potatoes.  I've got a couple lurking in the cupboard that need using - and I do want something different to the rest of the week's rice or pasta.

That's what I'm aiming for!

Wednesday's evening meal will be Tandoori Chicken from The Curry Guy.  I do have a lot of trust in The Curry Guy's recipes - and if he says that this is the closest he's come to creating a genuine Tandoori Chicken, then I'm up there for having a go.

I'll be so pleased if the rest of the family like this recipe, as we've been searching for a good reproducible home cooked version of the restaurant standard for a long, long time.

Now, Thursday's Ham & Apple Pie is one that I'm especially looking forward to.  It's an Arthur Potts Dawson recipe, from lovefood.com and I really like the idea of the layers of bechamel, ham, cheese and apple that the pie comprises.  The recipe isn't very far removed from our Kentish Pie, so I know that the flavours are sound - it's just the knack of the cook and the seasoning that counts.  This is another recipe for Bramley Apple Week - it's been a lot of fun, sourcing interesting apple recipes - and there's another one to come, in the shape of the Chicken Normany, before the week is up!

Not "the" recipe - but gives you an idea of how it should look!

I've got my fingers crossed for Friday.  Whether I make the Drunken Spaghetti or not on that day depends entirely on whether the powers that be get the wine to me in time.  I was contacted by a P.R. company for Barefoot Wines, who enquired whether I would like to receive a sample of a few of their wines to cook with.  Now as you know, I've been using wine quite regularly in my recipes so this was too good an opportunity to miss.  Hence the crossed fingers - as I was intending on using the Drunken Spaghetti recipe as a Valentine's Day possibility.  Aaah, cute, eh?  Get him drunk on spaghetti - nothing wrong with that picture, is there?

It seems like ages since we had a decent "proper" curry - and when I found Gary Rhodes' recipe for the Trinidad Prawn Curry, it sounded so light and tasty that it really got my mouth watering.  It's a different type of curry to the Indian style and although it uses curry powder instead of separating out each type of spice, the method of dealing with the curry powder is very different to what I'm used to - so I'm interested to see how that will work.

A random "Chicken Normandy" picture.

Sunday's Chicken Normandy takes me back to childhood again, when I am sure my Mum used to make a version of it.  I'm breaking out the good old Bramley apples again - I don't think I've ever used them so often - and with cider in the sauce, I'm hoping it measures up to my memories of the dish.

The observant amongst you may have noticed the appearance of the Chilli con Carne (or Chilli con Healthy) again.  For some reason, we keep dodging the appearance of this one.  I'm starting to wonder if it's the name that's putting hubby off - anything marked "healthy" is very definitely the cause of much suspicion - so have decided to re-name it plain old Chilli con Carne.  I will make this dish, I will!

So there you are.  A bit of an apple theme going on, but it's forgiveable I hope!

Oh, now speaking of apples - I forgot about the Dorset Apple Cake and the Cherry Shortbread Cookies I've got planned.

I'll be making the Dorset Apple Cake somewhere around Friday (for consumption over the weekend - helps to feed hungry teenagers!).  It's a recipe that the blog's old friend Willie gave to me absolutely ages ago and I have never got around to making.  So I'm going to be remedying that.  It looks incredibly simple to make and is the kind of cake that is capable of being a dessert with the addition of some whipped cream.

The Cherry Shortbread Cookies are really just an excuse to use my new cookie cutters - which are in the shapes of hearts and lips.  Valentines Day on the way?  Really? 

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Quick! Here's the meal plan for this week.

I should really be watching "The Apprentice", but no - I'm here typing away just so that I won't be too late with the meal plan for this week.  Feel sorry for me, because not only am I missing "The Apprentice", but I also just bashed myself on the forehead with our griddle pan, whilst trying to sniff the centre of it because it smelled of char-grilled peppers.  *blush*  Oh, I can't help it - and yes, I should have known it was that heavy as I've spent all afternoon cooking with it.  But there you are.  *chuckle*

So, without further ado, here's the meal plan for this week :

Quick stroganoff & pasta

Tandoori chicken & Jun Tanaka's char-grilled vegetable couscous

Minced beef, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots

Ken Hom's Broccoli Chicken with rice

Anthony Worrall-Thompson's "Health in a Bowl" with char-grilled Ciabatta

Phil Vickery's Pepperpot Beef & Orange stew with rice & peas

Cornish pasties, oven chips and baked beans.

So, who is coming over for what dinner?  LOL

There's quite a lot of chef accreditation going on up there, isn't there?  Unusually so - but then I have been trawling the Good Food Channel's "Healthy Recipes" section, which is where the most of these have come from.

I'm afraid it's no good trying to book for the Quick stroganoff & pasta, because we had that yesterday and I have to say that it was truly disgusting.  However, in my own defence, I cooked it especially for Son & heir, as he's had to suffer some quite vegetable-heavy dishes just lately, and it was a little culinary thank you for doing his best with them.  It hit the spot with him in that he cleared his plate and declared it delicious - so job done.  (Even if it did make me feel very peculiar, later on in the evening!).

Jun Tanaka's version - mine was a lot chunkier!

We've just had the Tandoori chicken with Char-grilled vegetable couscous and, wonder of wonders, I won again on the couscous front.  Oh, well, apart from with Son & heir, who has decreed he doesn't like the char-grilled flavour on anything (well, except a Burger King burger, of course.  ~rolls eyes~).  As for the Tandoori chicken being even remotely Tandoori - it wasn't.  Yes, I know we don't have a Tandoor oven here, but the chicken was supposed to have been able to be cooked on a griddle pan (are you sensing a bit of a fixation here?) which I had thought might lend it the charred flavour that goes with Tandoori foods.  As it was, thankfully, I only tried the little mini-fillets on the griddle pan.  As they welded themselves to it, I put the breast fillets into the oven!  25 minutes at 200deg and they were really quite tasty, if entirely NOT Tandoori.

We didn't manage to catch a photograph of the dish (forgot!), but I have a little couscous left over which I'll try and take a decent photograph of, just so that I can pass the recipe on - as it was really extremely nice and worth doing again.

We're having a de-constructed Cottage Pie tomorrow.  Well, I'm at work so it's unlikely I'll want to make a Cottage Pie, but you never know!  I've actually been having dreams (like, every night!) about Shepherd's Pie, so perhaps I should, just to see what will happen.  Son & heir will be okay with this one, as he loves minced beef in all its guises.  Hopefully it will also mean I can use up the Maris Pipers I got for the Cheesy Champ Mash plus the Chantenay carrots I got for Son & heir's Sunday chicken dish.

Ken Hom's version - looks good!

Friday will be one of Ken Hom's lovely easy dishes.  This one, Broccoli Chicken, will help to make use of the Oyster Sauce I bought recently.  It's also not quite a stir-fry and is served with rice, so I'm hoping that Son & heir will be okay with it.  I'm sure hubby will, as he really likes all the oriental style dishes.

Somebody had better remind me, though, that on Friday evening I'm supposed to be putting some Lentils on to soak, ready for making Anthony Worrall-Thompson's Health in a Bowl on Saturday.

Health in a bowl - well, we'll see!

I am super-intrigued by this one.  It has got everything bar the kitchen sink in it - everything that's good for you, anyway!  Plus, it is based on some thick cut gammon ham - which is something we haven't had for ages.  I'm sure it would work perfectly with a smoked ham hock, too - but I'll be darned if I can source one of those around here at the moment!  Of course, owing to the fact that I haven't used the griddle pan for a few days, I've scheduled us to have griddled Ciabatta with a smudge of garlic and a drizzle of olive oil, along with it.  I'm feeling healthier just talking about it - goodness knows how I'll feel the day after making and eating it.  (Fingers crossed).

Sunday's dish is another interesting one.  Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to do any more heavy old stews because it was spring time, but this recipe says it isn't heavy - and as it's based on a Caribbean recipe, I guess it's got a 50:50 chance of being healthy.  Anyway, it's another (very good) excuse to use some lovely Brisket of beef.  The rice and peas I've put as accompanying it, I have yet to decide whether to do traditional rice and peas, or just make rice with some green peas in it.  Authenticity -v- colour.  Hmmmn, the jury's still out on that one.

Now as for Monday, let's just pretend that Monday isn't going to happen, shall we?  Although, I will just quickly say that I'll be having a jacket potato instead of chips, but that still doesn't mitigate the damage done by a shop-bought Cornish Pasty.  *sigh*  All I can do is try.  Well, you've got to serve some Man-food sometimes, just so that he knows you're listening to him, isn't that how it goes?

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