An Indian Abroad Sunday Roast

However, you mark this season of goodwill, our CEO and Founder Kalpna Woolf encourages you to do it with good company and tasty food. Here’s her take on a roast dinner!

As a family we love to make a ‘traditional’ English roast but we can’t help introducing extra flavour (but no extra calories) through spices to each of the dishes for the roast dinner. When we make Indian chicken we almost always remove the skin – this is easy to do if and it will also allow the marinade to really infuse the chicken. 

Tip: Marinate for as long as possible – 4-6 hours in the fridge is good or overnight. Ask your butcher to de-skin the chicken if you don’t want to do this. 

Serves 4

Ingredients

For the marinade:

3 cloves fresh garlic 

2 inch fresh ginger – peeled

2 green chillies – roughly chopped

1 tsp salt

1 large lemon – juiced. 

1 lemon – chopped in half to stuff in the chicken 

4-5 tbsp olive oil 

Small bunch fresh coriander – roughly chopped

250g natural greek yogurt

Dry Spices:

2 tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp cumin powder

2 tsp ground coriander

½ tsp red chilli powder (optional)

1 medium free-range chicken – 1.5kg/3lb 3 oz – skinned

Pre-heat oven to 180 degree C.

To make the marinade:

Put the garlic, ginger, green chilli, coriander, lemon juice, salt and the olive oil in an electric chopper and chop into a smooth paste. This can be done in a large pestle and mortar by hand instead. Put this paste in a bowl and mix in the yogurt and the dry spices.

With a sharp knife, make lots of deep slashes into the breast and legs of the chicken. Rub the marinade deep into the slashes well. Place the lemon halves in the cavity of the chicken. Cover loosely with foil paper and place in the fridge to marinate. 

Take the chicken out of the fridge. Pour 100 ml /3 fl oz hot water in the bottom of the tray. Cook the chicken covered loosely with foil regularly basting with the juice. 10 minutes before it is ready, remove the foil and continue cooking. When cooked, take out of the oven and set aside (save the sauce in the oventray). Loosely wrap the chicken with foil and leave to rest for 10-15 minutes before serving. Use a hand whisk to smooth the sauce from the oven tray and pour as light gravy over the carved chicken. 

Recipe from Kalpna’s cookbook, The Spice Diet, available on Pavilion books. Photo courtesy of Clare Winfield.