Tandoori Chicken Wings with Green Lettuce
This week we highlighted some chicken recipes like chicken liver parfait, oven roasted chicken drumsticks and today tandoori wings.
Indian food is one of my favorites. When talking about Indian cuisine, I’m aware there is no unified cuisine, because India is very diverse due to its large territory and different regions, climates, ethnic groups, religions and traditions. Foreign invasions, trade and colonialism played significant role in India’s history and in its cuisine too. India has no less than 38 regional cuisines, religious Hindu and diaspora and fusion cuisines, like Indian Chinese, Anglo Indian. Most of the time they use locally available spices, herbs, vegetables and fruits.
The Indians are masters of spices and spice blends. Cardamom, clove, cinnamon, black pepper, cumin, coriander, nutmeg, mustard seeds, fenugreek, turmeric, saffron and cayenne pepper are some of the basic spices. I think everyone knows garam masala, it’s a very nice spice mix and its name means warm or warming spice, referring to the warmth it adds to the dish. The other well-known spice mix is the curry powder. It is a mix of turmeric, chili powder, coriander, cumin, ginger and pepper.
Tandoori on the other hand, is not a spice mix! A lot of people think tandoori refers to the ingredients of a recipe, but that’s not the case. Tandoori is the cooking method. Tandoor is a clay oven, commonly used to cook marinated meats or vegetables. These marinades are flavored traditionally with ginger, garlic, coriander powder, cayenne pepper, and garam masala. Marinated meats cook at high temperature. Most of us do not have a “tandoor” in the backyard but a BBQ grill or your oven will also work instead of it.
Tandoori Chicken Wings with Green Lettuce
Equipment
- Blender
Ingredients
Chicken Marinade
- 8 chicken wings depending on the size you might need more to have enough for 2 people
- 1 medium onion
- 4 cloves garlic peeled and minced
- 1 tbsp grated ginger
- 1 tbsp lime juice
- 3 tbsp sesame oil
- 1 tbsp grated lemon grass
- 1 tbsp coriander ground
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1½ tsp cumin
- 1 tsp black pepper freshly ground
- 1 tsp turmeric powder
- ½ tsp cayenne pepper or more if you like it hot
- 1 tsp salt
- 200 ml coconut milk
Salad and Coriander Vinaigrette
- 1 green lettuce
- 1 small red onion chopped
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 1 bunch coriander leaves and stalk
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 2 tsp honey
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp black pepper freshly ground
- 2 tbsp pine nut roasted
Instructions
- Put all ingredients for chicken marinde, except chicken wings, into a blender and pulse it for 2 minutes.
- Put the chicken wings into a bowl and add the marinade.
- Put it into the fridge at least an hour but better to marinate the meat overnight.
- Take marinated meat out from the fridge 1 hour before cooking.
- Preheat the oven to 200°C.
- Put marinated chicken wings into the baking dish, and bake them for 35-45 minutes, depending their size.
- Open the green lettuce to leaves and wash well so that no sand remains on the leaves.
- Slice the leaves and put them into a bowl.
- Put all vinaigrette ingredients, except pine nut and lettuce of course, into the blender and pulse it for a minute.
- Pour vinaigrette over the salad.
- Sprinkle salad with roasted pine nut and serve with tandoori chicken.