You might notice I hadn’t post recipe reviews the last 2 weeks, not including the fact that I was out of town last Friday. The truth is I did try out 2 new recipes in the intervening time, but they both failed and also looked like hot garbage, so I didn’t review them. But then I decided transparency is best, so I will review the latest one, chicken tikka from “Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen” by Kevin Mills and Nancy Mills. This is one of my favorite cookbooks as the recipes are easy, diverse but approachable for the beginner cook and also meant to be humorous. And the dish actually tasted fine to me, but it didn’t seem very authentic to Indian cooking, and also photographed like hot garbage lol.
Ingredients Summary – should be easy to find at a well stocked grocery store
- spices – garlic, ginger, cumin, cinnamon, black pepper, chili powder, cloves, nutmeg
- oil, plain yogurt (I used greek yogurt mixed with a little water)
- chicken breast
- lemon juice
Steps Summary – easy
Chop the garlic and mix into the yogurt with all of the remaining spices, lemon juice and oil. Cut chicken breasts into strips and marinate in yogurt spice mixture for 15 minutes to 2 hours. Then pan-fry chicken over high heat for 5 to 6 minutes. Serve with rice.
Taste Summary – mildly spicy with some heat and fragrance, tangy and creamy, a little “sweet” from the cinnamon
- Texture is as good as the chicken breast slices you cooked; mine was tender and juicy this time but there’s always one strip that’s tougher than the rest, which is the nature of cooking chicken breast I guess. While this dish is not supposed to be as spicy as other Indian foods, it’s still spicy to me, a Vietnamese person living in Texas, and my spice cabinet is extremely expired by at least 4 years. I dunno, you’d think British people can’t handle spiciness in their food, but when they do make food with more than 2 spices, it’s sinus-clearingly hot for some inexplicable reason. The other recipe in this book like this, Caribbean jerk chicken/tofu, is even more spicy, which I love and make all the time.
Convenience Summary – This was about as easy as you can get, just gather a bunch of spices, marinate for 15 minutes then cook for 6 minutes. The only thing needed is rice and some vegetables for a full meal, so I chopped some cilantro for garnish and ate it with the other failed recipe, kimchi, and some jasmine rice. I probably got about 4 meals out of this, and by the last meal the chicken had gotten a bit tough as the sauce dried out and of course, reheating chicken will dry it even more, but I’m okay with tough chicken as long as the flavor is good. Now I will say the Greek yogurt is thicker than plain yogurt and maybe that contributed to the lumpy sauce and drying out, so perhaps buying plain yogurt would improve the texture somewhat.
Would I make this again? I definitely would, if I had plain yogurt to spare. But I think the Caribbean jerk chicken is better from this book, so I would rather cook that recipe and use up even more (expired) spices lol. Again, this chicken tikka didn’t seem too authentic to me, I felt like it was missing something, like turmeric, but what do I know about Indian cuisine? Nothing. As long as it tastes good!