Posted on by The Medlar

Tandoori Chicken / Pheasant / Partridge

This is my take on tandoori, like I say in my ‘about’ page – this is about the ingredients I have to hand, so not trying to be authentic – just after something that tastes good to me.

I love this, prepare the marinade after breakfast, leave the bird in it all day and cook in the evening.

Prep: 5 min Marinade: 2+ hours Prep: 5 min Cooking: 24 min

Ingredients

  • 2 Chicken or two Pheasant breasts cut into 6 pieces each. Or 4 partridge breasts cut in 3 pieces each (skinless)
  • 1 green pepper cut into large squares
  • 1 onion cut into large squares
  • 2 tomatoes halved

For the marinade

  • 1/2 tub sour cream (about 125ml)
  • 1 tsp coriander
  • 1 cayenne chilli finely chopped or 1 tsp chilli powder
  • 1.5 tsp cumin
  • 1 dstspn garam masala
  • 2 garlic cloves crushed or chopped
  • 1.5 tsp paprika
  • 1 piece stem ginger chopped or crushed
  • juice of 1/2 a lime
  • salt and pepper

Method

  1. Mix all the marinade ingredients in a bowl then add the pieces of meat and stir to give them a good coating. Cover and put in the fridge for as long as you like (6 hours is good). When your ready start on step 2.
  2. Preheat the oven to 225oc (fan).
  3. Make up skewers of onion, pepper and the marinaded meat. place these over a baking tray and pour on any remaining marinade. Drizzle with a little vegetable oil.
  4. Add 50ml water and the tomato halves directly to the baking tray – this is to steam the meat as it cooks and with the marinade drips makes the sauce.
  5. Place in the oven to cook for 24min, baste every 6 minutes and turn at least once during the cooking time.
  6. Take out of the oven and empty the skewers onto the plate, put the baking tray on the hob on a high heat (8/10 on my induction) and stir briefly to mix the remaining water, sauce and roasted tomato halves. Remove the skins and drizzle on top of the tandoori.

Things to think about…

I use Vietnamese coriander paste because I grow it, and I use stem ginger, lime and sour cream rather than root, lemon and yogurt because I keep these in my fridge all the time. But use what you’ve got.

I normally serve it with a little rice (often flavoured with a cardamon pod in the water), a potato or pumpkin curry and poppadum’s or naan, along with dips – basically I love to have a taps style curry rather than a one dish meal.

Oh and skewers – get ones that are wide and flat so you can turn them and they stay – the bog-standard ones are two narrow and annoy me.

This recipe also works on the BBQ and with smoked paprika if you fancy mixing it up, although that’s best reserved for pheasant as it goes better with the taste of the bird.