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
