Chicken mandi

Before you start

• an oven standing in for a mandi pit — you get the rice and the meat, not the shaft of smoke they cook in
• a lump of barbecue charcoal and a small metal cup, if you want the smoke at all
• a rack that sits over your roasting tin

Ingredients

Serves 4 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 1 kgwhole chicken — jointed into quarters
• 400gbasmati rice
• 3 tspghee or oil
• 3 tsphawaij or mandi spice mix
• 1onion
• 2dried limes
• to tastesalt
• 1 handfulgreen chilli and coriander, for the sahawiq

Method

7 steps

1. fold · 8m

   Chicken quarters rubbed hard with the spice, salt and the ghee, working it under the skin as well as over it.

2. rest · 1 hour walk away

   An hour in the fridge, or overnight if the evening allows it.

3. boil · 6m

   Rice rinsed and started in a wide tin with the onion, pierced dried limes, salt and twice its volume of water.

4. roast · 55m walk away

   Rice tin on the oven floor, chicken on a rack directly above it so the fat drips down into the grains, oven hot. Cook until the thigh juices run clear and nothing at the bone is pink.

5. finish · 6m

   For the smoke: a lit coal in a small metal cup pushed into the middle of the rice, a teaspoon of ghee on it, lid or foil down at once.

6. rest · 8m walk away

   Left sealed while the smoke does its work. Longer than ten minutes and it turns acrid rather than deep.

7. finish · 6m

   Coal out, rice forked through, chicken on top, and the chillies and coriander crushed with lemon and salt for the sahawiq beside it.