The Tandoor Saga, Part 2

For all the buildup in yesterday's marinade making, the execution of the tandoori chicken is, sad to say, largely anticlimactic.

New Recipe, New Tool
Early this morning, I had an epiphany as I looked ahead to the day's events: Duh! I have a brand spankin' new grill pan! And I do! Mum bought it for me at Tuesday Morning (did I mention yet how much I love that place?) last weekend, and I figured, Hey, I don't have a grill upon which to finish up the tandoori chicken, so why not try out the grill pan?


Sorry for the overly sharpened image, but the two pics I had a chance to take while grilling the chicken came out blurry (I can't take a picture to save my sorry soul). Thanks to Photoshop, cropping the better of the two and then applying two coats of Sharpen made this one somewhat palatable.

In addition to the chicken, I made some jasmine rice, trying out the cloth-under-the-lid-to-absorb-the-moisture tip I gleaned from The Best Kitchen Quick Tips, and boy oh boy do those folks at America's Test Kitchen know what they're doing! Usually my jasmine rice winds up either undercooked and a bit chewy (because I didn't put in enough water) or overcooked and mushy (because I put in too much water), but this time I had wonderfully fluffy, fragrant rice, so I'm thrilled. Just another reason why...

I Heart Christopher Kimball

Since I only made two chicken breasts (one from a chicken juicin' more than Barry Bonds for the husband and for the boy, a breast from a chicken that had more going for it than I currently do), I thawed and heated on the stove some of my sambar for me to enjoy. I'm happy to report it's just as yummy (if overpoweringly sinus-clearing) after having spent some time in the deep freezer. I can't yet same the same for the carrot halwa I defrosted since I have not had any yet. (I'm taking this blogging time to digest and make room for it.)


My ancient Lady Kenmore has seen more action in the past month than Hugh Hefner has in the past...well, let's not contemplate that one. I just ate, after all.

Alongside the rice and chicken and sambar, I prepared a few pieces of poori. I'm still trying to figure out how to make these suckers puff the way they're supposed to, and I sure as hell didn't accomplish that tonight. The Golden Temple brand are performing better than the MTM brand by far, and perhaps I was hampered by my laziness: I cleaned off and reused the grill pan to do the initial heating of the poori instead of heating a skillet. I still love love love my heating rack/pepper roaster, and as you can see from the picture below, it does help the Golden Temple poori puff partially.


Get that poori some Viagra, stat!

Since the poori failed to perform, I had the husband nuke us some papadum. Those you really can't screw up--so long as you don't put them too close together on the plate. Or overnuke them. Or undernuke them. Or let part of the papadum not rest on the plate.

I apologize that I failed to get a shot of the chicken removed from the grill. By the time it was ready to be plated, I was juggling the poori, trying to get utensils, drinks and other dinnerware out for the kiddo to put upon the table, trying (and yelling a lot) to get the kiddo to set the table, tripping over hungry cats and just letting myself get lost in a culinary craze, a food-prep fugue. As I become more experienced, I hope my frantic end-of-cooking periods come to an end. Then again, if the husband and the kiddo would just learn how to read my mind and the feline kiddos could just learn to feed themselves....

And there you have it, folks--the end of the Tandoor Saga. Like I warned you at the beginning, it's anticlimactic. The husband reported that if the chicken had been baked/grilled/cooked in a drying heat, it probably would have tasted pretty darn close to the tandoori chicken he enjoys at Taj Palace and Indian Palace. The kiddo, as you can probably guess, refused to eat the chicken, but Daddy got him to finish off the small portion he'd been served. (Thank the FSM that I made a full cup of rice for the boy to fill up on!) Will I attempt tandoori chicken again? Probably so--but when the boy's on another one of his visits to Nana and Papa's house.