Sunday Special - Grilled Chicken

We had started a summer weekend tradition of roasting chicken for my daughter and her playmates a few years back. We had setup a fireplace on the terrace and had the kids play around in the evening, while we roasted the chicken. We would setup a moonlight dinner for them. They all just loved those evenings and would look forward to the next time we plan it.

The first time, I went all out with an Italian herb recipe to marinate the chicken. They liked it but felt the chicken was not spicy enough. So the next time, I went with the traditional Indian spices and they loved it. So I stuck to that marinade mix ever since.

But with the arrival of my little one, and the time it took to roast the chicken on fire, I started grilling it in the oven and then taking it to terrace to smoke it in the fire. The kids still loved it and we felt the chicken was still juicy in this method of cooking.

But this tradition got sparser and sparser after we read about the health hazards of consuming smoked or grilled foods frequently.

So we had stopped grilling chicken, until recently, when my little one took a liking to grilled/barbecued chicken and not the regular chicken curry I cook at home. So I had to get back to grilling the chicken in the oven.

Oh Boy! do they love it. If they are not home when I am grilling, they get back home and start sniffing around immediately asking if I have grilled chicken. And the little one wants to eat it real hot, straight off the oven.

Okay without much ado, let us get to the bottom of it! How to get the perfect juicy grilled chicken.

All recipes for the marinade mix talk about hung curd. That is curd hung in a muslin cloth for a few hours, such that the whey is drained out and we have very thick cheese like paste.

I tried mixing the regular spices with hung curd, but I felt the marinade did not do the job. The spices did not penetrate the chicken even if we make the right cuts.

So I stopped filtering out the whey and started using the curd as such in the marinade. For this recipe, we buy the chicken with the skin. The skin protects the inside from drying out and helps it cook well. The grilling process will char the skin, but you can just remove the skin, once it is out of the oven, and you are left with juicy grilled chicken.

Recipe (serves 6-8)

Ingredients

Marinade mix:
Curd - 1 cup
Chilli powder - 2 tsp
Salt - 1 tbsp (or to taste)
Cumin powder (jeera) - 1 tsp
Pepper powder - 1 tsp
Coriander powderr (dhaniya) - 1 tsp
Turmeric - 1/4 tsp

Chicken - 1 full uncut with the skin

Olive oil - 2 tbsp

Juice from lemon - for garnishing

Method

Clean the chicken and make cuts along the legs and breast of the chicken. Leave the skin intact.

Mix the ingredients for the marinade.

Smear the marinade all over and make sure to stuff the cuts with enough marinade.

Let the chicken marinade at room temperature for an hour or two.

Grease the grill pan with olive oil. Place the chicken on the pan. Drizzle some more olive oil on top.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius.

Place the grill pan on a stand such that it is as close to the grills on the oven as possible.

Grill for 60 minutes.

Make sure to flip the chicken over to the other side and brush the chicken with the juices collected in the grill pan

Remove the charred skin out. brush again with the oil and juices. 

Serve with mint chutney and a slice of lemon. 

Verdict: The skin helps to retain the moisture during the grilling process. Using regular curd instead of hung curd helps as well. I would love to hear any tips and known tricks that work for you. Do let me know in the comments.

Khadi Pakora

Picking off from my earlier post on "Lemon Rasam", talking of comfort food, I believe Khadi Pakora counts for a few people although I was only familiar with the South Indian counterpart of Khadi - the "more kozhambu" in Tamil or "majige huli" in Kannada. But there are fundamental differences between these two. Thanks to my mother-in-law I learnt how to make this delicacy.

The pakoras are something I have experimented with a couple of times using moong dal and this is the recipe that has worked for me.

The Khadi and pakoras have to be made simultaneously. The pakoras have to be fried and dropped hot into the Khadi that is cooking. Time the recipes accordingly as per your convenience.

What usually works for me:
Grind the paste for the pakoras without adding baking powder and then go ahead with the khadi preparation.
While waiting for the khadi to boil after adding water, heat the oil for frying pakors, add baking powder to the pakora paste, and start frying them.

Recipe for the Pakoras (Makes about 25 small lemon sized pakoras)

Ingredients
Moong dal - 6 tbsp
Dry red chillies - 2
Salt - to taste
Rice flour/Besan -  1 tbsp
Baking powder - a pinch
Turmeric powder - a pinch

Method
Wash and soak the moong dal in just enough water to cover the dal, for about half an hour to an hour.

The dal should have soaked most of the water. Drain the rest of the water out if any and grind the soaked dal, dry red-chillis, salt and besan/rice flour into a paste.

Heat oil in a heavy bottomed kadai. By now the Khadi should be cooking in another kadai.

Add baking powder to the paste made earlier.

When the oil is hot, pick small half-a-lemon sized portions of the batter and drop them into the oil. Fry until golden brown on all sides.




Recipe for the Khadi (serves 4)

Ingredients
Besan (gram flour) - 1 tbsp
Thick curd - 1/2 cup
Water - 1 cup
Salt - to taste
Chilli powder - 1/2 tsp
Turmeric powder - a pinch

For Tadka (Tempering)
Oil - 1tbsp
Cumin seeds (Jeera) - 1 tsp
Curry leaves - 6-7

Method

Make a paste of gram flour (besan) and curd and set aside.

Add oil to a hot heavy bottomed vessel and when the oil is hot enough, add the cumin seeds and curry leaves. When the cumin turns brown, add the curd-besan paste. Add salt, chilli powder and mix well. When the mix comes to a boil, allow it to cook in low flame, until the raw smell of besan is gone. After that add water mix well. Make sure there are no lumps. You can add water gradually, stirring all the while. Let it come to a boil again in low flame.

While the Khadi is simmering, add hot pakoras into the mix.

Hot khadi-pakora is ready to be served with rice or roti.

You can drop half the fried pakoras into the khadi and reserve to rest to share as a crispy treat either with lunch or at tea-time. My kids prefer eating the pakoras as such and don't prefer Khadi as much.

Verdict This has been a hit with folks at home. A welcome change from regular dal and sambhar we make, so the grown ups love it, and the kids love the pakoras, so a win-win. 

Lemon Rasam

"The Hundred Foot Journey" is a movie about an aspiring cook who wants to work at a french restaurant. The matriarch,  played by one of my favourite British actors, who runs the restaurant has a simple test for the applicants. She asks them to make an omelette.

One would wonder what is so complicated about making an omelette that a chef needs to clear such a task in his job interview. But how innovative one can be with the combination of spices and flavours, how long the omelette needs to cook on the pan, how much oil to use, everything counts.

Drawing parallels to that movie, I have always considered Rasam, the quintessential part of South Indian cuisine, as the benchmark of how good a cook one is.

Personally it is my comfort food. Rice and rasam, with a spoon of ghee and side of papad is just what I would love when I am feeling under the weather.  Even for babies that start off on solids, we beat rice and dal, and add a few spoons of rasam to smoothen the mix. That childhood taste is probably what makes it a comfort food for most of us.

Every one has their own version of good rasam.

A friend of mine used to say, "ரசம் இலுப்பை சட்டியில தான் பண்ணனும். கொதிக்கும் போது வேளாவனும். அப்போ தான் நல்லா ருசியா வரும்"

Translation: Rasam has to be boiled in a heavy bottomed iron vessel. And when it comes to a boil, it has to be stirred a few times. Only then it gets tasty.

That is her version of good rasam.

So back to my version, there has to be dal (no two ways about this) and something tangy preferably, yes you got that right, juice of a lemon!

I typically make this on Sundays. Even if I am not making rice for lunch, I still make a bowl of lemon rasam to be consumed as soup.

Recipe (Serves 4)

Ingredients

Toor Dal - 1/4 cup
Tomato - 1
Ginger - 1/2 inch piece
Garlic - 4-6 cloves
Pepper powder - 1/2 tsp
Cumin powder - 1/2 tsp
Salt - to taste

For tadka (tempering):
Oil - 1/2 tbsp
Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp
Whole Urad dal - 1/2 tsp
Curry leaves - 6-8
Dry red chillies - 2 broken in halves

Coriander - finely chopped for garnishing

Juice of half a lemon - for the final flavour

Method

• Boil toor dal with turmeric powder until soft and of mashable consistency. Allow to cool.
• Use the mixer or food processor in pulse mode for a couple of seconds to make a smooth paste of the dal.
• Mash the tomato, garlic and ginger into a fine paste.
• Heat a heavy bottomed kadai, and add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the mustard seeds, urad dal, chillies and curry leaves.
• When the mustard seeds splutter, add the tomato paste.
• Add the pepper and cumin powder and salt. Allow the paste to cook well until the raw smell disappears.
• Add the dal paste and sufficient water. I usually add about 2 cups. Give it all a stir and let it all come a boil.
• Take it off the heat, transfer to a serving bowl, garnish with coriander leaves and squeeze the juice of half a lemon into the rasam.
• Tada, your tangy dal-based rasam is ready!!! 

Feel free to gulp down  a few spoonfuls while you taste it, but be careful not to burn your tongue else you will be sorry as you cannot taste anything for the rest of the day.

Verdict: Piping hot rasam, whether served as soup or with rice is a welcome addition at my home. While I was writing this post, my little one looked at the picture and said, "Ma, from tomorrow onwards can you please add rasam to my rice?". This is the highly picky child who has stopped mixing even ghee into her rice and eats plain white rice, with veggies or salted peanuts on the side. No amount of verbal persuasion changed her mind, but the picture above did. There you go! You have the verdict...