Tandoori Chicken - without a Tandoor

I don’t make Tandoori Chicken at home. When you can order the same off the restaurant across the road, it somehow seems pointless. Especially because the restaurant boasts of a tandoor (clay oven) and I don’t. And I would be a fraud to make this at home and call it ‘tandoori’ chicken when in fact – there was no tandoor to make it in!

So after struggling with this notion and willfully desisting from even venturing in that direction – the co-resident broke all the rules. He was having a barbeque party and could I please marinate some chicken for it? Sure I said, ‘What marinade do you want?’ Tandoori marinade, he cooed.  *Gasp, splutter, shaking the head in disbelief and denial*. Why don’t you just buy it off *insert name of restaurant here*, I asked. Because for a barbeque party you need to barbeque, not buy stuff and besides it’s not like you will be grilling it, just marinating it, he insisted. Sigh… that logic was sound and I’m a true believer in good logic, but it was just working against me here!

So he went and bought the chicken and the rest of the ingredients and even proceeded to wash and clean the meat. He extracted the lemon juice and set aside all the masalas for the marinade. With no excuses left, I had to succumb. I felt strangely guilty – like I was going against my ‘Do not Do’ list! In the end, I did marinate it and the co-resident turned out a beautiful tandoori chicken sans tandoor. Maybe my guilt will be assuaged if I just call it chicken barbequed in Indian spices. But that sounds long and boring. So we’ll leave it as Tandoori Chicken and I’ll add a disclaimer.

Signature Tasting Menu @ Peshawari Tandoor by Turquoise (Koramangala, Bangalore)

I have eaten at Turquoise and Peshawari Tandoor a couple of times and have always enjoyed their food. The restaurant plates their food beautifully and after seeing some pictures of the Sunday brunch captured by my fellow foodie Harsha (of the FB group Bakasura) I had to go and get click crazy! The reason I haven’t written about it for so long (almost a year!) has been two fold (a) My forgetfulness – which includes leaving the camera at home and (b) the low ‘mood’ lighting in their Indian restaurant. (It’s done up with multi-hued ceiling to floor chandeliers!). Mood lighting encourages romance but does NOT a good picture make!

So I happily trumped in on Sunday with my camera and my friend Shwe in tow – expecting to go photo crazy on their buffet table. Unfortunately, they informed me that the Sunday brunch has now been stopped L (Lesson learned for being a procrastinator!). Luckily they had a Signature Tasting Menu of all their best dishes and we were more than happy to sample the same. And the best part – they were going to serve each dish at the table, so I could relax and let the party come to me!

I made two small requests – firstly, can we be seated at their sunlight restaurant on the 2^nd floor? and secondly, I wanted a seat next to the large window. Since I mostly eat out at night, I was not going to pass up the opportunity of clicking pictures in daylight! Now that we got the basics of a good lunch in place (I’m a food blogger… what do you expect?), we settled down to be entertained.