This one’s so easy to make that I could even make it through my back ache. And it tasted really good, different and, at the risk of sounding like a food marketer’s brief, tasty AND healthy.
I did use a bottled sauce, but hey, do you think that restaurants make all their ingredients and sauces themselves?
Peri Peri Chicken
- The key ingredient was Nando’s Hot Peri Peri sauce. I got this at Pali Market, Bandra and it should be there in most malls. It’s made with lemon, garlic, chillies and sun dried tomatoes. It’s on the tangy side and costs Rs 165 (3.25 USD). It’s made in South Africa. It should last 3 meals for two
- I took 6 chicken drumsticks. Made cuts in them for the marinade to go in.
- Marinated these with about 3 table spoons of the sauce and half a tea spoon of salt.
- Kept this for an hour in the fridge
- Took these out and put them on the grilling plate of the micro and switched on the ‘tandoori chicken’ cycle. This is a prefixed cycle which lasts 30 minutes and alternates between microwave and grill automatically. It beeps half way through when you take out the whole grill plate carefully and turn the drumsticks around so that they grill evenly. You can use an oven too if you have one
- With the final beep your grilled, oil free, peri peri chicken is ready
I wanted to have these with some potato chips but didn’t want to deep fry them. So this is what I did:
- Sliced three potatoes into wedges
- Boiled these wedges in the micro for seven minutes. They became a bit soft and cooked. You need less oil this way
- Heated a table spoon of olive oil in a pan
- Tossed in the potatoes.
- Sprinkled some salt and chilly flakes and oregano from pizza delivery sachets.
- Stirred them gently for a while
- The result was a nice, slightly braised (crisp outside, soft inside) potato fries
Had this exotic meal with some chopped pao (local bread).
So there you have grilled peri peri chicken and herbed potato fries… impressive and yet can be cooked in one’s sleep.
And the best thing, is no one will know 🙂
P S got a very interesting question from Scarlett… how do you grill in the micro without the mess? My solution – put a flat plate on the micro grill plate. Then put the micro grill plate on it and the stuff to grill on the plate. The juices will fall and collect on the plate. You can later spoon a bit of this on the food when you are serving it.
