Chicken Dishes

Unless you happen to have a backyard full of very long-legged, thin, scrawny, bad-tempered chickens that eat nothing but what they can scavenge from the dustbins and scratch out of the earth with their very long-toed, hideous, gnarled feet, you are going to have difficulty in capturing the authentic flavour of an Indian chicken dish. The Indians do not have a squeamish and sanitised approach to food, unlike we Westerners who refuse to accept that chickens have bones, so, for a start, all the chicken used is cooked on the bone, the oldest and the toughest ones are chopped into bite-sized pieces (and that is the whole chicken, by the way, nothing is wasted) and are simmered slowly in fragrant and spicy sauces. Young, but equally scrawny chickens are preferred for grilling and roasting in the tandoor oven. So, if you can, try to find a source of fairly elderly free-range cockerels so that you can really enjoy the following recipes.