Cooking With Fire

My top tip for a drum barbecue is to always load the charcoal at one end. That way you have control over temperature, so for something like chicken you can roast it at the cool end until it reaches a good internal temperature then finish it over the hot coals. Also works when you're at the end of a more normal burgers / sausages kind of bbq - you can keep things warm down the cooler end while everything else finishes off.

Not really.

Not because I'm an arse but because I sort of wing it. If I were to make it now I'd go with something like the following (marinade overnight):

Marinade

• 1 cup (250ml) of full fat yoghurt
• 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 4 large garlic cloves, minced
• a thumb-sized piece of ginger, grated
• 1 tbsp kashmiri chilli powder
• 1 fresh green chilli, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp garam masala
• 2 tsp cumin seeds, toasted, crushed
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tbsp dried fenugreek leaves, crushed
• salt and pepper.

Optional

• a few drops of red food colouring if that 'look' is important to you.

Substitutions

• you can use bottled lemon juice instead of fresh but it's not as good and you probably need more of it.
• you can use shop-bought minced garlic and ginger but again, not as good and you would need to increase the amount.
• you can use regular chilli powder instead of Kashmiri chilli powder, but use a little less
• you can use ground cumin instead of the seeds, but again it won't be as pungent so use more.

Making life easy

Replace everything after the garlic and ginger with a shop-bought tandoori spice mix. I've used the Schwartz Tandoori Curry Blend before with acceptable results. Just use a lot. I'd go with at least 50g of the mix. The yoghurt will calm it, and the fire will also calm it, so you want to use plenty to get that flavour into the chicken.