GF Chicken Tikka Marinade

We have been going barbecue crazy in all this hot weather, and we have sorted out the back garden too so that we have somewhere nice to sit while we eat. We just have a small back garden so its going to be easy to plant and maintain. We have chosen structural and Japanese style plants like bamboo and small pines so the garden will feel lush and full of lovely green-ness when it all gets going.

We had a barbecue last Sunday with the husbands brother which was nice. I made some chicken tikka chicken kebabs, with a coriander dressing and my brother in law brought some lovely aubergines stuffed with spinach, ricotta, chorizo, tomato and onion. Yummy. The recipe is here and is GF of course. He also brought me some organic sainsburys cider as I can't drink beer and this was lovely over ice.

The chicken kebabs are adapted from a recipe my mum used to make, here ya go, its easy peasy if you have one of those little blenders. You can also use the marinade for whole chicken breasts.

Gluten Free Chicken Tikka Kebabs

fresh ginger root 5cm, roughly chopped
garlic 2 cloves, roughly chopped
red chilli 1/2, deseeded and roughly chopped
turmeric 2 tsp
garam masala 3 tsp
greek yogurt 5 tbs
lime 1, juiced
salt
chicken breasts 2

Makes enough for 2 people, add more chicken and a bit more yogurt mix for more guests.

First chop the chicken into nice big chunks and put them in a bowl with the lime juice and a big pinch of salt. Cover and leave to marinade while you make the yogurt mix, the chicken will go white and funny looking because of the acid in the lime, don't worry about this! Put all the other ingredients in a little blender and blend till its all chopped up and yellow looking. Add more spices if you like a stronger taste, sometimes I bung in a load of masala curry powder in too, you can experiment with different mixes of spices. If you really must have this a red colour then add some red colouring, naturally it will be bright yellow.

Drain and pat dry the chicken, then divide between as many skewers as you like for bigger or smaller kebabs. Put them on a baking tray or big plate and blob the marinade all over and under the chicken. It will run off a bit, so just scoop it up and blob it back on.

Cook these under the grill, in the oven, or for best results on the barbecue. Make sure your chicken is cooked through well on the barbecue please! These will take about 20 mins under a normal medium grill so base your cooking over coals on that.

If you have some marinade left that has not touched chicken this is nice on the side. You can also serve with a sauce made from 1/4 lime juice, 3/4 olive oil, a pinch of salt and loads of roughly chopped fresh coriander.

PS, Good news for Nandos fans, the peri-peri on the chips is now optional so I think this makes the chips GF friendly, yay!