Tandoori Chicken and Fixins'

Good News: My roommate has a tripod so my pictures for my later meals will look better, I hope.

Story: I want to concentrate on different cuisines every week or two. This time it's Indian food. I may revisit a cuisine later and try some more dishes. So I went to the local Indian grocery store earlier in the week and spent three hours going up and down the aisles. After an hour, I could tell I was scaring the store owner so I went up to him and told him what I was doing. I made a bunch of Indian food today and I'll break it up into several blogs.

Apparently, there are a lot of Indians in Charlotte. Who knew? I went to a local place called "India Grocers" (not too sure where the owner got his marketing degree from). The store was located in Pineville which was about 15 minutes from my house.

I love Indian food and was really introduced to it during law school where some of my friends and I would go to a local Indian buffet (Taste of India) and stuff ourselves with naan, butter chicken, saag chicken, vegetable fritters and more. We found out very very quickly that eating 3 plates of Indian food is not a good pre-game for an hour long torts class.

While studying in Oxford, I found a great place called Aziz. This is probably the most amazing Indian, well technically Bengladeshi food, I have ever/will ever have aside from the food that some great friends have made me. Aziz has won the Top 10 Curry Award in the United Kingdom twice, the website is http://www.aziz.uk.com/scripts/homepage.asp . On Sundays, my friends and I would make a walk from our house through a park, through some of Oxford's farms, and eventually make it to Aziz which was about two miles away. It was well worth the walk there and back.

Inspired by my memories of Aziz, I decided to make tandoori chicken. Note: Apparently, the red color, the touchstone of tandoori chicken, is from food coloring. In that way, tandoori is the red velvet cake of the poultry world.

Making the marinade:

I mixed ginger power, cumin, salt, pepper, FRESH garlic (hooray!), paprika, and tumeric together.

It seemed like a lot of spices, but you have three pounds of chicken you can't be conservative with the amount of spice you put in. (After note: after trying the chicken, I definitely needed to add more spices) With all the spices I squeezed the juice of one lemon.

To prepare the chicken, here I used all drumsticks. It seems like the restaurants all use dark meat for tandoori chicken. I pulled the skins off of the chicken and washed them. Make sure you pat them dry or allow them to drain fully. The last thing you want is to water down your marinade.
Next, cut slits into the chicken. This does two things..First--it lets the marinade go deep into the chicken and second it makes cooking the chicken faster.

I mixed all the spices and the lemon into non-fat plain yogurt.

After you do that, you have this very fragrant--spiced pudding. Just not one you want to eat immediately.

I poured the spiced-gurt onto the drumsticks and got my hands dirty. You want to get the mixture deep into the chicken. I then put the chicken into the fridge and let them marry overnight.

When you're about ready to cook, take the chicken out for about 20-30 minutes before grilling. I lightly oiled the grill rack and put the chicken on the grill making sure that I scraped the excess marinade off the chicken.

I learned that you have to resist the urge to move the chicken and constantly check on it. I grilled the drumsticks on their first side for 8 minutes and got pretty nice grill marks.

I then flipped over the chicken and let the pieces grill covered until they were done. Grilling chicken is tricky. Since the pieces are odd shaped couple that with inconsistent thickness and it's a tough task.

A good rule of thumb that I use when grilling is putting the bigger pieces of first and also try to put them in the middle. That way you're more likely to have your chicken done all around the same time.

To make sure the chicken is done, see if the juices run clear or cut into and guestimate if the temperature is hot enough (160F).

I put cold fresh tomatoes and onion slices to eat with the chicken. I also put on the side some mango chutney which was a great compliment with the tandoori chicken.

Ingredients: Chicken, yogurt, tumeric, ginger powder, cumin, salt, paprika, pepper, FRESH garlic, lemon, onion, tomato

Wish List: I just needed to put in some more tumeric, salt and pepper into the initial spice mix.

Putting a temporary restraining order on Italian food

Warning! Do not try these at home!

Story: So I had a lot of time on my hands (two blogs in one day!). This is my last Italian meal for awhile and I will move onto another cuisine next week. Plus, I am in the middle of editing a paper and people that know me know that I like to cook to procrastinate. During finals, I make my most time intensive meals.

The meal I'm making tonight was my Oxford staple. I really never liked Italian food before my visit to Italy. I loved the food so much I went to Italy twice and stayed a total of two weeks there. Needless to say, I loved EVERY meal.

I decided to make my favorite pasta dish--at least the sauce part. I think pesto, garlic, tomatoes and spinach make a great combination. It works with all types of pasta-- raviolis, linguine, spaghetti etc. The sauce sticks to the pasta very well. This time I decided to use gnocchi.

I started off by sauteing the tomatoes with olive oil. Cherry tomatoes add a subtle sweetness that's quite nice. I try not to cook them too much or the water will spill out and you'll have watery sauce.

After the tomatoes were nicely sauteed, I added the squid ringlets, peeled shrimp, and some baby scallops. Once the seafood is nicely browned---which happens pretty quick- I added some garlic (powder) and onion (flakes) and some pesto. They do the job but you can't replace fresh garlic and onion.

I turned off the heat and loaded the pan with a pile of spinach. The residual heat in the pan and in the tomatoes/seafood are enough to wilt the spinach nicely. You don't want anymore heat or you'll overcook the seafood.

After some careful stirring. Then all you have to do is again carefully scoop in the gnocchi and stir that around to coat the pasta. I always save some of the salted pasta water so you can make the pasta thinner if necessary. For this kind of sauce its usually necessary for a well-drained pasta.

Plated: I know you are not suppose to mix cheese with seafood, but that's like drinking and driving. You're not suppose to do it, but its fine/fun as long as you don't get caught.

Victory Dinner! Last pasta dish for awhile. This forkful has a little bit of everything: shrimp, spinach, tomato, and gnocchi.

Ingredients: Gnocchi, Salt, Leftover Pasta water, shrimp, squid, scallops, spinach, olive oil, pepper, garlic powder (sigh), onion flakes (sigh), cherry tomatoes

Wishlist: Fresh garlic and onion

Random Lunch Break

Story: Had some extra time to make lunch today. Last week, I had way too many beers and visited Bojangles too many times for my liking. With that said, I'm trying to get back on healthier, fresher foods. I needed something to eat with a Thai Pad Prik chicken salad I put together so I decided to make a tomato-salami tapenade.

Tapenades usually are made from olives and anchovies. Instead of anchovies I used sliced salami and some parmesan cheese I had left over from the last blog entry. To replace the sharp taste of the olives, I used the roasted bell peppers and some tomato for acidity.I thought I made enough to share. I didn't.

The final product on the grill.

Ingredients:

Topping: Cherry Tomatoes, Basil, Salami, Hummus, Olive Oil, Pepper, Parmesan Cheese, Roasted yellow bell peppers, Wheat Bread

I figured I didn't want to use olive oil as the liquid so I decided to put in some hummus I picked up at the store, coincidentally it was Red pepper hummus. Yes, I know that hummus has olive oil in it so I thought it was going to be a suitable substitute.

Pop all that stuff in a blender with some salt and pepper and you have a tapenade spread.

After the mixture was well blended, I dropped a few pinches of parmesan cheese to add a little salt to the mix and to get a grainy texture to the tapenade. I didn't want a smooth puree on top of the bread. I grilled a few slices of wheat bread and then heaped on spoonfuls of the topping and let it toast up on the grill.

And there's lunch

Wish List: Capers, Anchovies, olives for some real tapenade

Opening Statement!

I live in Charlotte now. That means I have to gather, kill (if necessary) and cook my own food. I've decided to start my blog for two reasons. Hopefully it'll motivate and inspire me to create interesting, amazing, and delicious meals. As a bonus, it'll show the ones that love me that I'm eating well and staying alive.

I'm going to try to make two entries a week which means that I'm going to eat at least two home cooked meals a week. There are no restrictions to my entries/entrees and I'll try my best to make a variety of meals from places all over the world (most likely places I have visited). When applicable, I'll try to give a little story behind the meal.

Ingredients: Wheat Dough, Bisquick (sigh), Pesto, Salt, Pepper, Roasted Yellow Peppers, Blue Salem Cheese, Grated Parmesan, Romano Cheese, Pepperoni, Cherry Tomatoes, Olive oil, Memories of Italy and Friends

Wish List: Rolling Pin, pizza cutter, Flour

Things I Learned: Pizza crust should have been thinner. A rolling pin would have solved that problem.

Story: I made pizza tonight. I used wheat dough and I had to use Bisquick as flour since I didn't have any at the house. It worked out well but dried the dough out a bit. I didn't have a rolling pin either so I had to toss and thumb out the dough.

This was the first time I made pizza since I was in Radicafino, Italy. My friends and I rented a villa for the week. The place had a woodfire grill where one night we made pizza! This was my ode to that great night.

Pizza Night!

Woodfire Oven at our Villa