Spiced Chicken

The best way to cheat for a prepared ahead party is food that can be made a week or more in advance. Its so easy to take it out of the freezer the night before so that it is easy to throw the defrosted dish into the oven an hour or two before everyone arrives. One of my most thumbed through cookbooks is Madhur Jaffrey's Simple Indian Cooking. The many stains on the pages is a testament to the deliciously failproof recipes. This recipe is adapted from her Tandoori Chicken. This is one of my favourite dishes to put on the table early in the evening of a bbq, it gives anyone who is absolutely starving something to munch on while waiting for the main event and the later arrivals. It also freezes nicely in some snaplock bags.


3kg chicken thigh meat
juice of 2 lemons
1 teaspoons salt
900ml plain yoghurt
1 onion
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tablespoon ginger, chopped
4 tablespoons kashmiri chilli
3 tablespoons coriander seeds
2 tablespoons cummin seeds
1 tablespoon garam marsala

Squeeze the lemon juice over the chicken and sprinkle with salt. Set aside.

Process a few spoons of the yoghurt (just enough to make it easy to process) with the garlic and ginger. Process until smooth and mix through the remainder of the yoghurt.

Fry the coriander and cummin in a small dry saucepan until fragrant. Grind in a co-opted coffee grinder or mortar and pestle. Add the freshly ground spices with the kashmiri chilli and garam marsala to the yoghurt mix. Pour over the chicken and freeze.

The day before the party put the chicken in the fridge to defrost.

I tend to cram the lot into two trays quite tightly so it takes about 45 minutes to cook in a hot oven, 220˚.