Tandoori Chicken, or any other flavour you like

Anyway, I’ve probably got a complex about it now; I fiddle with chicken way more than I’d ever fiddle with red meat or seafood. As I’m inable to resist the cut-price bargains in the supermarket meat aisle, the odd little whole chook finds its way into my freezer, and this is what I do with such a creature.

First, I walk all the way from the meat aisle to the Asian food aisle and buy a bottle of Sharwood’s Tandoori Paste. NO, ANOTHER BRAND WILL NOT, REPEAT NOT, DO. The others are all unmitigated crap. If I’m in a different mood or I forget the tandoori and find myself at home with a naked chook, I might go for a Masterfoods Honey/Mustard marinade instead, and I’m sure this would work with any strong-flavoured thick marinadey stuff.

Now for the fun. I’m a frustrated vet at heart, and if one has the most rudimenary knowledge of anatomy, boning out a chook can be quite amusing, in a forensic sort of a way. If you couldn’t be buggered with this, buy chicken pieces instead. But this looks great when you take it out of the oven, and your friends will all go ‘OOOOOH AAAAAH’ and you can smile mysteriously like a right royal wanker.

With a small, lethally sharp knife, cut through the skin along the middle of the chook’s breast (ie a straight line from ex-neck to arse). Then slide the knife along the bone on whichever side you want to work on first, gently easing the flesh away. If you always angle the knife slightly more towards the bone than towards your fingers, you should be able to avoid self-mutilation.

Work along in lines, gradually moving downwards. When you get to the wing and leg joints, take out your frustrations with the last tard to get in your face and bend the joints the wrong way until you hear a little snap as the ligaments give way… hee hee hee. Then cut carefully through them and detatch the joint.

Keep the knife close to the bone all the way, inserting the point first and just easing along, and you should eventually have half a chook with only the leg and wing bones still inside. Don’t cut through the skin along the backbone- just leave the whole side flopping, and then go back and do the other side. You’ll end up with a sort of flat gutless chook with bones in the limbs, and a nice mostly defleshed carcass to clean your dog’s teeth with. (They do love flavoured toothbrushes.)

Now find a nice baking dish big enough to accommodate the flattened chook. Slice a large potato or two very thinly, and cut a large onion or two into thin half-rings. Layer the potato and onion in the dish. Turn the chicken fleshy-side up on the cutting board and paint it generously with the tandoori paste (or whatever you’re using); then lay it out on the bed of onion and potato, painted side down, and paint the skin side.

What? You don’t eat the skin? You’re reading the wrong cooking page. If God had meant us not to eat chicken skin, chickens would be born naked. Paint the bloody skin, it’s the best part.

Now leave the whole caboodle for as long as you’ve got before dinner time- or not. The flavour will go through the chook more if you leave it for an hour or two, or all day, or overnight… whatever.

When you’re ready to cook, pop the lot in a preheated oven (180 degrees C, or 350 if you have a dinosaur model in F) and whack it in for about three quarters of an hour (more for a bigger chook, of course, but I tend to buy the little ones because there are only two of us- and one chook does two meals if we don’t pig ourselves).

When it’s done, take the chook off the veggies (after everyone’s admired the effect) and divide it into 4 portions. Spoon up the veg on the side. YUM!

This is also gorgeous cold. And if you want to be a REAL wanker, serve it with a dressing of plain yoghurt laced with lots of garlic and sprinkled with chopped cucumber. Unreal.