Tandoori Chicken With Garlic Spinach

Submitted by Jacqui from Oz

"Another recipe from CSIRO cookbook. Preparation time does not include marinating. Was not overly impressed with the garlic spinach, but loved the chicken!!"

 

• Ready In: 35mins
• Ingredients: 13
• Serves: 4

ingredients

• 1⁄3 cup tandoori paste
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 400 g low-fat yogurt
• 1 1⁄2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 800 g chicken thigh fillets, skinned and cubed
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 3 small onions, thickly sliced
• 1⁄4 cup water
• 300 g baby spinach leaves
• 1 cup coriander leaves (cilantro)
• lemon wedge
• mango chutney

directions

1. Marinate chicken in a mixture of tandoori paste, cumin, lemon juice, two-thirds of the yoghurt and two-thirds of the garlic for at least 3 hours.
2. Preheat oven to 180c. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper and thread chicken pieces onto skewers (soak skewers in water for 30 mins to prevent burning).
3. Heat oil in non-stick frypan to medium and saute onion until soft, then transfer to one of the baking trays.
4. Increase heat of frying pan and cook chicken skewers for 2 minutes one side and 1 minute the other side. Transfer these to the second baking tray and bake for 6-8 minutes. Put onion into oven for final 2 minutes of cooking time.
5. Meanwhile, bring water to simmer in a large saucepan. Add spinach and cook, stirring gently, until limp. Add the remaining garlic and stir to combine.
6. Toss coriander and warm onion to combine.
7. Serve wilted spinach topped with onion mixture and chicken skewers, and offer lemon wedges, chutney and remaining yoghurt.

Reviews

[Elie de Combys]

I won't rate this because I didn't use tandoori paste, I used dry tandoori (don't do this, folks, trust me!). Also, I didn't have lemon juice. But it turned out somewhere near awful. The marinade clinged to the chicken, and when it cooked, the yogurt curdled so it really had an unappealing texture and a funny taste.<br/><br/>Apart from my unfortunate experience, the recipe is probably great, except that there were no indications regarding the size of the cubes or the way to put them on the skewers or to handle the skewers, so I must've done something (another thing) wrong, because after 8 minutes in the oven it wasn't cooked, even though I thought I had cut the pieces quite small. So I put the skewers under the broiler, 2 minutes on each side, and then the cooking was OK.<br/><br/>I will try this again when I have more chicken, this time I will use lemon and make tandoori paste instead of dry tandoori. I thought this recipe had potential, but I really messed it up XD