It’s definitely not an easy dish to make. This delightfully challenging dish also happens to be one of my favourite Indian dishes. Tandoori chicken.

First, you’d need to prepare the fresh ingredients consisting of ginger, garlic and green chillis. Mix these with a cup of pain, unflavoured yoghurt spin it in the blender.

Once the fresh ingredients are ready, you can add in some salt, cumin powder, garam masala and food colouring. You’d need a couple of spoons of red and yellow food colouring. Mix everything well and marinate the skinless chicken pieces in this coloured mixture.

Next, this is supposed to sit in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours. You can’t rush it. This dish must be prepared one day before you crave for it.

Fast forward one day and the meat is ready for the tandoor. OK, I don’t have a tandoor whose charcoal fire imparts a distinct taste to the meat. The purists argue that electric ovens are not hot enough to cook tandoori chicken properly, but some books say that you can still do it.

I grilled the meat at 260 deg C for almost 30 minutes. The aroma was just amazing. Squeeze some lime juice over the meat and we’re ready to serve. The taste is passable. I should have put more salt in the marinate. We all know that the colouring is for decorative purposes, something like the redness of char siew. Blindfolded, the coloured and uncoloured versions should taste exactly the same. Let’s test my objectivity and see how it tastes without the colouring (or blindfold) next time.

© Chan Joon Yee