Oven-fried Spicy Chicken

This is one of my favourite dishes evah, inspired from Anjum Anand’s brilliant Indian Cooking Made Easy. It’s probably not for you if you’re on a strict, reduced fat diet, but served with a light salad this is probably not too much of a biggie.Drain off any excess oil on kitchen towel before serving. In any case its healthier than KFC in terms of nutrition and karma…

You can do the marinating up to 24 hours in advance, if you want to, and do the crumbing anything from 2 hours to 5 minutes in advance of cooking, which makes it very flexible. You might think from the marinade ingredients this is very hot, I promise its not. Serves 2-3. Three of ate this with salad but found we would have welcomed another piece of chicken each. We are fairly greedy people though!

For the marinade:

• 4 chillies, red, green or mix, roughly chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
• thumbsized lump of ginger, roughly chopped
• heap teaspoon garam masala
• juice of one lemon
• salt & pepper (don’t be shy with this)
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil

Chicken:

• 6-8 free range chicken pieces, skin removed
• breadcrumbs made with 6 slices stale white bread, mixed with a teaspoon each of ground cumin and ground black pepper and a sprinkle of salt
• 2 beaten eggs
• 1 lemon, quartered

Firstly, make your marinade. Either with a handblender (easy) put in your marinade ingredients and whiz to a paste or (a bit more elbow grease required) put the dry ingredients in a pestle and mortar and grind down, and then add your liquid and mix to a paste. With a fork or small sharp knife puncture holes into your chicken pieces all over and then massage in the paste. Cover and keep in a cool place until about an hour before you’re ready to bread it.

Preheat your oven to Gas 6. Place your beaten eggs on one large deep plate, and on another, put your spicy breadcrumbs. Submerge a chicken piece in the beaten egg until covered and then dip the eggy chicken into the breadcrumbs and turn and coat, turn and coat a few times until the chicken is lightly covered in breadcrumbs. Repeat for each piece of chicken. Pour around 4 tablespoons of groundnut oil in a large roasting tin and put in the hot oven for five or ten minutes. When the oil is nice and hot, slightly smoking, put in your chicken pieces . There should be a satisfying sizzle. Put the chicken in the oven for half an hour- 40 minutes until the chicken pulls away from the bone easily, but turn the chicken halfway through, so it has a chance to brown and crispen on each side. When cooked, leave to rest for 5 minutes whilst you make your salad and serve with lemon wedges. Scoff.