By fair means or fowl.

After a two week abstinence, we finally made it to the supermarket yesterday.  The trolley was 3/4 full by the time we made it to the groceries, due to much buying of nappies, baby-wipes, baby food, toilet cleaner and other sundry items of a non-edible nature.  This, of course, left little room for the things I like - food.  Before we set off I mentally prepared myself for a two day curry marathon - my partner was going out on the razz two nights on the trot.  

I decided that I would try my hand at chicken tikka, followed, the day after by chicken makhani (or butter chicken, as it is often known).  This means I could buy a whole chicken, joint it, marinade, roast then use the left over tikka to make the makhani on the Wednesday night.  I have jointed a whole chicken before, but I confess to using what might be termed as a "slash and burn" approach - i.e an industrial-sized Global cleaver.  This works but it's a bit messy.  I decided to watch Dhruv Baker joint a chicken on a Waitrose endorsed video (you can watch it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYmoRg_vcmE ).  It was actually excellent and I can now say I am an expert jointer of chickens.

The tikka itself is fairly simple - you just need some time to marinade.  Madhur Jaffrey advises you to take at least 6 hours, but I decided to go with a measly 4 hours.  Just out of interest, as you might know, I love etymology, the word tikka comes from the hindi word, "tukra" which means pieces.  So in fact a tikka is nothing about how you cook it, more so how you prepare your chicken. 

I took a picture this morning of the residual chicken that I will make my makhani tonight with:

Chicken Tikka 

•   I used a whole chicken weighing approximately 2kg.  I jointed it into wings, thighs, drums and breasts.  The carcass and wing tips were used to make a stock (for a separate, unrelated dish).  The joints were gashed, not too deeply with a knife.
  
•  The joints were placed into a bowl, salted with a pinch of sea salt and covered with the juice of a lemon.  I mixed the juice and salt into the chicken pieces.  Leave for 30 minutes.
•   In a mini-blender add 3 small, hot green chilli's, 4cm of peeled, roughly chopped fresh ginger, 4 peeled cloves of garlic, a small onion, roughly chopped, a heaped teaspoon of regular paprika (for colour) and 2 teaspoons of garam masala.  Blend to a smooth paste.  I simply refuse to use food colourings in anything I cook, and this is no exception. 
•   Mix the paste into 500g of full-fat yoghurt.
•   Pour the paste over the chicken.  Cover and refrigerate for >3 hours.  Overnight is best, but I scrimped with 4 hours and it was fine.
•   Heat your oven to 220C.
•   Take a large baking tray, line it with aluminium foil.  
•   Shake off as much as the marinade as you can from the chicken pieces and place on the tray.
•   Cook for 20-25 minutes.

I ate the chicken tikka in pitta breads with a shredded, green lettuce, some mayo and mango chutney.