FLOWER POT KITCHEN: TANDOORI CLAY POT CHICKEN

28 Sept 2018

TANDOORI CLAY POT CHICKEN

This is a winning dinner cooked in your home oven with all the benefits of charred clay pot cooking ensuring your tandoori chicken will be unbelievably moist succulent and outrageously flavoursome. This has my family demanding more more more! Served in skillet cooked flatbreads with charred onions, crisp iceberg and a fresh mint mayo yogurt, this dinner leaves my family almost silent at the table, the whole reason for cooking and sharing is just this watching everyone enjoying every mouthful.

Marinating 12 hrs+ / Cooking 20 minutes

Flatbread 1hr proving / Cooking 4 minutes

Equipment Clay pot, Clay flowerpot and base as lid or Casserole dish with lid.

Ingredients

(serves 4-6)

Tandoori Chicken 12-24 hrs in Advance

8 skin off boned out chicken thighs cubed

200ml full fat yogurt

2-4 tbsp tandoori spice

(homemade recipe below)

Marinate the chicken in the yogurt and tandoori spices over night or 24 hrs is great but in a hurry just a hour will do, the longer the marinating the deeper and better the flavour.

Fixings Family Style

1 iceberg lettuce finely sliced

2 onions chunky sliced

1 tbsp olive oil

1 bunch fresh mint chopped

6 tbsp mayonnaise

250g yogurt

Mix the yogurt, mayonnaise and chopped mint together.

Heat your skillet hot add the oil and onions, sear the onions for 5 minutes.

Homemade Tandoori Spice

Dry Spices

4 tbsp paprika

1 tbsp ground ginger

1 tbsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground turmeric

1/2 tsp Himalayan sea salt

1 tsp sugar (optional)

Whole Spices

6 dried Kashmiri chilli's or 1-2 tbsp ground

3 tbsp coriander seeds

1 tbsp cumin seeds

1 tsp fenugreek seeds

1/2 tsp whole cloves

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns

1/2 tsp cardamom seeds from 10 bashed pods

Heat a dry skillet medium hot, add all the whole spices and gently warm for a minute or so. Remove from the pan and in a spice, coffee grinder or pestle and mortar grind the whole spices to a powder, mix with the remaining dry spices. Keep remaining spices in a air tight ball mason for up to three months.

Flat Breads 1-48 hrs in Advance

500g 00 flour (blue caputo)

15g yeast (optional)

10g Himalayan sea salt

50g olive oil

320g water

Flatbreads

Place all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and either by hand or by machine with a dough hook mix for seven minutes, then dust a little flour over the dough mix and gently form into a ball, cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave in a warm area to prove for 1-2 hours until doubled in size if you want to use immediately, then other options are leave to prove slowly in the fridge for 24hrs, this is what I do as it gives me much more control over time and usage, this will keep for 48hrs in the fridge ready to go when you are, you can also freeze any left over dough at this stage, then when ready to use remove from the freezer defrost and once up to room temperature use as you would fresh.

Take a oversized golf ball piece of dough, dust your work top with a little 00 flour, roll into a ball and roll out a large disk no bigger than your skillet if your not cooking in a wood fired oven, heat to a hot heat, place the flat bread in the pan and cook for one and a half minutes on each side, keep warm by wrapping in a tea towel until serving, these flatbreads are best served warm but are almost as good used later the same day, to use the following day dip the flat breads in water and pop in a pre heated oven for 3-5 minutes and Ta-Da almost as good as fresh.

Ready To Cook

Pre heat your oven 180 C, if using a clay pot or flowerpot soak in water for 15 minutes. Heat a cast iron skillet or griddle really hot. Skewer the marinated chicken and place on the griddle, leave for around 4-5 minutes to char, turn over and char the other side. Remove from the griddle and place the skewers in your clay pot along with 50ml of water, pop on the lid and place in the oven to finish cooking for a further 10 minutes, leave to rest in the clay pot for 5 minutes before serving.

Serve family style with a stack of warm flatbreads, all the fixings and enjoy.

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LIFE MY PASSION

Welcome to my daily life of cooking, one winters day many years ago my family and I were all inspired by a back to back rainy day of River Cottage this got us to stop talking about and start actually doing, suddenly three weeks later eight vegetable beds were dug, greenhouse erected and our first vegetables were propagating, this was the start to raising and growing our own food, our fabulous son Oscar changed our path in life which lead us to sell our small thriving restaurant of 10 yrs and to start our new life (Terrifying!) a life of the self sufficient in touch with nature and seasons, taking a step back and looking forward to a slower change of pace and making the most of every moment.

My passion for cooking was stronger than ever and having time at home with Oscar I found I had a new direction and I was no longer striving for perfection, I was suddenly very passionate for the enjoyment of the other side of food, something I had not realised, being the Chef/Cook and every other duty of your own small restaurant made me see that I never actually took time to cook what I wanted!

So there I was muddy boots and hands digging deep in more than one sense and I found myself transported back in time to where everyone grew some of their own food, it is a wonderful world with a real sense of achievement and loss, Slugs Snails and Caterpillars! But thats another story! Childhood memories of summers when I lived with my grand parents reminded me of so much that I had learnt about the make do and mend generation that I had forgotten.

Now as a family we love our free wild food days where we gather what nature has provided, have gone from being mini mini garden urban small holders, who did raised pigs at home because we could not wait to find land and supporting ourselves from our garden to now owning a very small farm that allows us to grow more vegetables for the whole of our family and neighbours, raise our own gorgeous Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs, (Sausages!) and pets! Dorset Down sheep, chickens for eggs and pet goats! Suddenly having large quantities of produce started to wake up the Cook in me!

The Cook was awake that part of me that wants to cook for the masses and I found myself setting up Flowerpot Kitchen, a Farmers Market Stall, I wanted to use our honest raised meats and make old fashioned pork pies, rabbit pies and game pies from the local game keeper along with old fashioned techniques and the best hot water crust pastry. This in turn grew to a small cottage industry from home weekly supplying three farm shops and a deli along with also attending three farmers markets A few years later there came a time when my son Oscar's health changed and it was an easy decision to stop.

I still hold the occasional pop up 40 seater restaurant or gourmet lunch which we do for local charities for the love of sharing food and to remind that Cook in me why I love our go slower self sufficient life!

So here I am sitting amoung the vegetables watching the chickens loving that every season nature teaches me something new and that nature is in charge! She has taught me to just go with it and grow. Give it a try from a tray of salad on your windowsill to a few tomato plants it all counts.