Tandoori chicken

I am still feeling afraid each time I hear of curry. One of the most typical flavors and tastes of these tandoori chicken is curry. But tandoori chicken is so popular that I was very curious to know how the taste would be like. Since I never dare eat any curried-foods in Singapore for their very strong smells and tastes, but I am willing to cook at home so that I can at least control the amount of spicy ingredients I need to put into the food. For this chicken in particular, because of yogurt is used in the marinating sauce, I felt relieved with the thought that yogurt would make the curry milder.

This tandoori chicken needs to be marinated for a long time, even overnight. So I needed to prepare the chicken on the previous day. It is not troublesome at all because it took just a few minutes to prepare all the ingredients before chilling everything in the fridge. The next day we only need to heat the oven and bake the chicken. 

The curry taste was still very obvious in this chicken, but it is much milder. The chicken was very tender and moist. The recipe uses whole chicken legs, but I had only chicken thighs, so again I cooked with chicken thighs only. 

Ingredients: 

- 4 chicken legs

- 125g natural yogurt, stirred until smooth

- 1 garlic clove, minced

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 1 1/2 tsp paprika

- 1/2 tsp curry powder 

- 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

- 1/8 tsp cayenne powder

- 1/8 tsp cloves

- white sesame seeds, as needed

Cooking:

- Rinse the chicken well and pat dry with kitchen papers. 

- Combine all the other ingredients except for the sesame seeds. Add the chicken to the marinating mixture, soak well to coat the chicken evenly. Cover and place the chicken in the fridge to marinate for at least 2 hours or over night. 

- Preheat the oven to 350F (180C) for fan oven / or 300F (200C) for convention oven. 

- Place the chicken on baking pan and bake for about 45 minutes. About 15 minutes before the chicken is done, sprinkle the sesame seeds over the chicken.