BBQ Chicken-Uttar Pradesh Style...by (Angela) Jean

When you come to our house for dinner you can never really know what to expect.

Shawn and I both love to cook, and since he is currently the at-home parent, he does most of the weekday cooking. In my admittedly biased opinion, he is a most-excellent house-husband, and most nights when I get home, an amazing dinner is waiting for me. Last night was no exception.

One of Shawn's favourite cookbooks is Mangoes and Curry Leaves, by Jeffery Alford and Naomi Duguid, a husband and wife team of writers, travelers, photographers and cooks. This is not an ordinary cookbook, but rather a tour of the great subcontinent: Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The reader is taken along on a journey and introduced to "the kaleidoscopic experience of life in these countries: hundreds of millions of people, myriad languages, mountain kingdoms and searing tropics, and a breathtaking array of cooking styles and foods". It is filled with over 200 stunning photographs of the people, places and food of these lands and contains more than 200 traditional recipes-everything from Nepali grilled chicken to Pakistani lamb pulao to simmered Kashmiri paneer. Alongside the mouthwatering photographs are over 40 essays documenting the lifestyles, history and people of this diverse region.  Even if you don't cook, this book is a treasure for the photographs alone.

So, back to dinner. Our dear, dear friend Julie was coming for a visit, so Shawn busted out his trusty book and decided to try the Yoghurt Marinated Chicken Kebabs, a recipe from Uttar Pradesh. The authors tell us that Uttar Pradesh is "a heartland state of northern India, just south of Nepal...it is famous for the holy city of Varanasi, and the Taj Mahal, in Agra.

It was extremely tasty, and not a morsel was left at the end of dinner. The kids loved it too. Along with the chicken, Shawn also threw some asparagus on the grill. They were tossed in olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt. Simple and fresh.

Here's the chicken recipe. If you're looking for something different to add to your BBQ repertoire, I suggest you give it a try.

Yogurt Marinated Chicken Kebabs

• 1lb boneless skinless chicken breasts (we used thighs, but I think you could use legs if you wanted to)
• 1tbsp minced garlic
• 1/4 cup finely chopped garlic chives, regular chives or scallions
• 1 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper, or 1/4-1/2 tsp cayenne
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil (we used extra virgin olive oil)
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1 or 2 limes or lemons cut into wedges

 Rinse off chicken, cut into chunks (we just left the thighs as is for easier grilling) and place in a wide shallow bowl.
Mix marinade in a small bowl, whisking the garlic, greens, salt, pepper and oil into the yogurt. Pour over chicken and stir. Cover and set aside to marinate for 1-2 hours.
The recipe goes on with instructions for putting the chicken on skewers, but I'm pretty sure you can figure that out. We just grilled the thighs as is.

Give it a try and let me know how it turns out.

P.S. Here's Julie playing with the rascals. They adore her as much as we do.