food experimentation

the other day i decided to make chicken skewers using a recipe i found in one of the random cookbooks i have. incidentally it came from one called 'Healthy Eating' which when i brought it down to the kitchen it was met with an incredulous expression from my housemate Michael. as you can probably tell, my housemates and i are not diet-/health-obsessed. we are hard-core foodies.

it was called 'Spicy Chicken Skewers' which involved using yoghurt in the marinade, something i thought would be interesting to try since i've not done a dish like that before. the recipe did look bland/boring/urgh in terms of flavour as it only asked for yoghurt, 1/2 a teaspoon of ground tumeric, a clove of garlic, a small red chilli (chopped) and the juice and rind of half a lemon. i decided to pack in more flavours by tweaking it a bit:

200ml of yoghurt
1/2 clove of garlic (because i discovered i only have half left), finely chopped
1 (rounded) teaspoon of ground tumeric
a splash of extra hot chilli powder (to make up for the fact that i didnt have any fresh chillies)
a small knob of ginger, finely chopped
juice of 1 lime (because it has a punchier flavour than lemon)
a handful of parsley leaves, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon of chopped lime rind
salt
pepper

soak the skewers in water so that they dont catch fire when you grill them.
skewer the chicken and coat with extra marinade so that they dont dry up under the flame.grill till you get the nice charred look.

the strange twist to this is when the skewers were grilling, lynn (my other housemate) came through the front door and asked if i was making otah otah (spicy fish paste wrapped in banana leaves and grilled). i hadnt noticed how the chicken smelt of something so familiar from back home. once they were done, i did a taste test and to my surprise, the chicken tasted like pandan chicken grilled in banana leaf.

and the funniest thing is that i didnt put any pandan into the marinade.

so now i've a recipe for pandan-less pandan chicken. how cool is that?