Indian Tandoori Cooking
By Liz Canham, Tue Jan 10th

Traditionally, tandoori dishes are cooked in a tandoor, an ovalshaped clay oven with a small fire in the bottom. The heat risesgradually but ultimately reaches a much higher temperature thana barbeque.

A tandoor is normally used to cook naan bread, meats and kebabs(meat or paneer). The bread is stuck to the sides, the kebabsstood vertically and whole chickens rested on a grid over thefire.

For domestic cooking, a tandoor is not really convenient but themeat dishes can be reproduced on a barbeque or in the oven. Thebright red appearance of tandoori meats which you may see inIndian restaurants is produced by a food dye which really isn'tnecessary to enhance the look of your tandoori dishes.

I have a great fondness for tandoori style food. It has flavour,without being "hot" or high in calories or too filling. In factit's an ideal dish summer or winter, if you fancy something alittle different. As a bonus, it doesn't take hours to prepare.Of course you can take all the effort out of it and use apre-prepared mix, but I think they have less flavour and youcan't use them for anything else, whereas if you use theindividual spices, you can make other dishes as well.

You can easily make tandoori chicken (whole), tandoori lambchops (pork would be more unusual, but there's no reason why youshouldn't use it, if you prefer) and lamb tikka (kebabs) but mypersonal favourite is chicken tikka because it's so quick sohere's my own recipe.

This recipe serves two people - multiply it for as many peopleas you

want.

Ingredients

• 2 Chicken breasts
• 1small tub Greek yogurt
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1tsp ground coriander
• ½ tsp ground turmeric
• ½tsp ginger powder
• ½ tsp chilli powder (or totaste)
• 1 small clove garlic, crushed
• salt totaste
• 1 tbsp lemon juice

Cut the chicken breasts into 1 inch cubes and set aside. Mix thespice powders and garlic into the yogurt. You can use low fatyogurt if you prefer. You can also use fresh ginger or gingerpaste from a jar rather than ginger powder but go easy on thequantity as it can be quite over-powering.

At this point you can also mix in the salt and lemon juice butif you do so, don't leave the chicken to marinade for more thanabout 20 minutes or it will become very dry when cooked. If youwant to marinade it for a longer time, add the salt and lemonjuice just before you cook the dish or sprinkle on to serve.

Thread the chicken onto skewers and either barbeque or cookunder a grill using medium heat until the chicken is slightlybrowned and cooked through.

For a light meal, serve with salad, pitta or naan bread andlemon wedges or for something more substantial with rice anddahl.

About the author:Liz Canham:

As well as a love of Asian and travel as you can see inher Asian Food andCookery and Travellers'Tales websites, Liz seeks to help newcomers to the world ofinternet marketing with tools, tips and training from her Liz-e-Biz.com website.