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Chicken with black spices and a saffron and cardamom yogurt

Sanjay Dwivedi from Market Kitchen
Sanjay Dwivedi cooks his spicy alternative to the infamous Indian high street offering of bright red chicken tikka

Chicken with black spices and a saffron and cardamom yogurt

Method

1. For the tamarind chutney: in a saucepan, combine all the ingredients except the ground ginger and black salt. Bring to the boil, lower the heat and simmer gently for 1 hour 30 minutes.

2. Pass through a sieve. Stir in the ground ginger and black salt.

3. For the black spice masala: preheat the oven to 150C/gas 2.

4. Spread the spices on a baking tray and gently roast until they release an aromatic aroma. Blend the spices in a coffee grinder until finely ground and store in an air tight container.

5. For marinade 1: puree the ginger, garlic and chilli to a paste with the olive oil. Add the lemon juice, black spice masala and a pinch of salt. Rub this mixture into the chicken morsels and leave to marinate for 2 hours.

6. For marinade 2: stir the ingredients into the marinating chicken and marinate for at least another 6 hours or, better still, over night.

7. For the saffron and cardamom yogurt: put the saffron and cardamom pods in a small saucepan with a little water and boil until the water has reduced and the saffron has released its colour and flavour.

8. Combine the yoghurt and mayonnaise in a bowl and stir through the saffron-infused water.

9. Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 6 or preheat a grill to hot.

10. Thread the chicken onto skewers and cook in the oven or under a hot grill until cooked through.

11. Serve with saffron and cardamom yogurt and a green salad and garnish with toasted sesame seeds.

Cook’s notes:
Tamarind is a sweet/sour ingredient, derived from the pods of the tamarind tree. It comes in a variety of forms, from dried pulp to a concentrated paste or puree.

Jaggery, also known as palm sugar, is a hard brown sugar, derived from the coconut palm.

Black salt (known as Kala Namak or Sanchal in Hindi) is a special type of Indian volcanic rock salt, with a distinctive sulphurous mineral taste, rather like hard-boiled
egg yolks.

All of these ingredients can be found in the Asian section of your supermarket or from Asian markets.

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Serves: 4

Ingredients
4 chicken breasts, cut into 5cm cubes

For the tamarind chutney

200g Tamarind, (see cook’s note below)
100g Jaggery, (see cook's note below)
1 cinnamon stick
2-3 whole green cardamom pods
1 tsp Coriander seeds
1 tsp Black peppercorns
1 green chilli
2 cm piece of Ginger, peeled and sliced
1 litre water
pinch of ground ginger
pinch of black salt, (see cook’s note below)