This weekend the girls spent quite a while helping me out in the kitchen. We were experimenting with the Lake District Dairy Co. Cooking Sauce which is a range of flavoured stir-in sauces made with quark - a low calorie, high-protein dairy food which make a great alternative to creme fraiche or double cream when cooking. We made our own Indian roti bread and filled them full of tandoori (OK... grilled) chicken and topped it off with a generous helping of Tikka Cooking Sauce and served with a home-made spinach and chickpea curry.
TANDOORI CHICKEN ROTI with TIKKA QUARK SAUCE (serves 2 adults and 2 children)
For the tandoori chicken
6 chicken thighs (skinned and boned)
1 dessert spoon vegetable oil
1 dessert spoon curry powder
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
Red and Yellow food colouring (optional)
Cucumber
Fresh Corriander (chopped)
1 pot The Lake District Dairy Company Tikka Quark Cooking Sauce
For the roti
225g self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Water
For the chana saag
1 tin chickpeas (drained)
1/2 red onion (thinly sliced)
1/2 a large bag of baby spinach leaves
1 desert spoon whole cumin seeds
1 teaspoon black onion seeds
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon curry powder
METHOD
1. Roughly chop the chicken thighs into chunks about an inch long. Place in a bowl with the oil, curry powder, turmeric, chilli powder and food colouring. Stir well and leave to marinate for at least an hour.
2. Make the roti dough by sifting the flour into a bowl and adding the salt and oil with a dribble of water until it forms a smooth dough. Need the dough until it turns soft and smooth and then leave it in a covered container for 30-50 minutes.
3. Shortly before cooking, break the dough into six pieces and roll each of them out into a thin round. Brush with a little oil and fold in the edges to make a little packet. Leave them for another 10 minutes.
4. If you don't own a tandoor, and, like me, you're also too lazy to light a barbecue then you can still cook the chicken under a grill. My chicken pieces took about 10 minutes under a medium grill. You can leave it to stand before serving.
5. Gently fry the onion with the vegetable oil in a large frying pan until softened, then add the chickenpeas and warm them through. Sprinkle over the curry powder, cumin seeds and onion seeds and fry for a minute before adding in the spinach and a dribble of water. The spinach will take a minute or two to cook while you serve the rest of the dish.
6. Just before the chicken is cooked, roll the roti packets out again into thin rounds and cook in a dry frying pan for a minute or two on each side until they start to colour and puff.
7. Heat the Tikka cooking sauce using the instructions on the tub.
8. Place some of the grilled chicken on each of the roti breads, top with cucumber slices and then drizzle over a generous serving of quark Tikka cooking sauce. Sprinkle with chopped fresh corriander and add a second roti to the top before serving with a spoonful of the spinach and chickpea mix.
10. Nom.
In the past I might have served a disk like this with a cucumber and thick yoghurt sauce but replacing this with a quark sauce means less fat, less saturated fat and more protein in the dish. Everyone in the family enjoyed their tandoori chicken flatbreads and The Lake District Dairy Co. Tikka quark went down well - it was a perfect accompaniment to the dish.
