Food Talk
Don’t chicken out

Using a few drops of oil, grilled chicken makes for a delightfully light and healthy meal, writes Pushpesh Pant

A grilling you’ll enjoy Ingredients

750 gm chicken breasts, trimmed and slightly flat, washed and patted dry

Juice of one lemon

Four garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 tbs each Kashmiri mirch and oregano and paprika

2 tsp olive oil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Accompaniments

Assorted boiled vegetables

Buttered herb potatoes

Method

Place the chicken in a shallow dish and bathe it with lemon juice. Combine garlic and the spices mixed with oil and massage the chicken breasts gently. Cover and marinate for two to three hours at room temperature or in the fridge overnight. Preheat the oven to 200`BAC/400F. Place the chicken in a shallow roasting tin and roast for an hour or until the juices run clear when the thickest part is pierced with a point of knife. Alternatively, you can pan grill the chicken on a non-stick frying pan 5-7 minutes each turning sides on medium heat.

THE bird flu scare over and thanks to Sanju Baba’s cuddling and lending support to fittum-fit desi chicken our lost love for the desi chooza has been rekindled. What can be healthier for the die-hard carnivore than the white flesh of the chicken breasts?

And if the cholesterol bug has bitten, you have no fears. There are ways to consume mouth-watering chicken that barely uses a few large drops of oil per person and that too the hazard-free olive oil.

Chicken breast pan-grilled or roasted in an oven makes a delightfully light and healthy meal — just what the doctors order and the heart yearns for. What is more a grilled chicken prepared with more than a hint of firing continental touch is quite easy to prepare and hardly takes any time once the marination is over.

How easily we forget that roasting or grilling is what our ancestors started with in the pre-historic era. It has been suggested that they discovered the joys of cooked food when they tasted meat accidentally grilled or roasted in a forest fire or perhaps when a chunk of raw meat slipped into the flames of the fire that protected the home and hearth of the cave-dwellers.

Grilling and roasting remain the most healthy cooking techniques — using the least amount of oil and lending themselves to easy adjustments to individual taste — from ‘rare’ to ‘very well done’. And let us reassure you that the exotic sounding ingredients — herbs like oregano, rosemary or thyme are not entirely alien to our own spice gardens.

Many have Indian names and are easily available these days in grocery stores. In case you still find then difficult to source, you can happily replace these with your favourite spice or herb — shahzira, powdered dalchini (cinnamon) and dry pudina. The more adventurous can play around with even kauri methi.

Such a roast or grilled chicken is very different from the rich gravy taste dark brown dak bungalow roast that the khansama produced to please the bada saheb showing off his continental repertoire.

The accompaniments are equally easy to prepare and their inclusion makes this a perfectly balanced meal to prepare the herb potatoes.

All you have to do is to do is to throw in a pinch of herbs in half a tsp of butter melted in the pan, mixing it with the juices yielded by the chicken and toss potato fingers culled from large boiled potatoes. Carrot cubes and diamonds of beans add a pleasing splash of colour on the plate.

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