This recipe is adapted from one in Sunil Vijayakar’s The Big Book of Curries. Sunil is a wonderful food writer and stylist whose understanding of how to cook with spices is inspirational. Here he’s used garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander and chilli, along with fresh coriander, mint and lime – which is a fairly traditional mixture. But what I loved about this recipe was the perfect balancing of these spices – just enough ground cumin and ground coriander to give a lovely pungent base and then a really fresh, vibrant chilli, ginger, herbs and lime mixture. (All I did to adapt it was to substitute dairy-free yogurt for the natural yogurt he uses, and I also used unsalted peanuts instead of the skinless roasted ones he uses, simply to reduce the salt count.)
* gluten-free, wheat-free, dairy-free, yeast-free, egg-free, seed-free
- 100ml/3½fl oz/scant ½ cup dairy-free, plain yogurt
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed
- 2 tsp peeled and finely grated root ginger
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 green chilli, finely chopped
- 1 large handful coriander leaves, chopped
- 1 small handful mint leaves, chopped
- juice of 2 limes
- 800g/1lb 12oz skinless chicken breast fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces
- 2 tbsp chopped unsalted peanuts
- salt
- lime wedges, to serve
- Put the dairy-free yogurt, garlic, ginger, cumin, ground coriander, chilli, coriander and mint leaves and lime juice in a blender and blend for 2–3 minutes until fairly smooth. Season lightly with salt.
- Put the chicken in a large bowl, pour over the yogurt mixture and toss to coat evenly. Cover with cling film and leave to marinate in the refrigerator for 4–6 hours, or overnight, if time permits.
- If using wooden skewers, soak them in cold water for at least 30 minutes before cooking. Preheat the grill to medium-high. Thread the chicken pieces onto the skewers and grill, turning frequently, for 8–10 minutes until cooked through and lightly browned. Sprinkle with the peanuts and serve hot with lime wedges for squeezing over.
Those kebabs look gorgeous! Great recipe! 🙂
Many thanks, Dimitri!
Thanks for a great recipe !! Made your Green Chicken Kebabs for souper . I didn’t use any nuts but they were simply delicious anyway! I will post the recipe in french and english on my blog tomorrow. Greetings from Quebec Canada 🙂
Hi Gabriele, Lovely to hear from you and I’m delighted to hear you liked the recipe. That’s so kind of you to post this – but I can’t find your blog – what’s the link? Many thanks, Grace
Hi Grace,
sorry about that, I thought my name was automatically linked with my blog. Here you go : http://gabscuisine.blogspot.ca/ I am still working on it and beeing german, my english it is not always perfect but I hope you’ll enjoy my blog anyway. 🙂 Soon, I’ll be posting an about me page. I just didn’t got around that part yet.
Gabriele 🙂
Hi Gabriele, Many thanks for the link – and for posting the recipe which looks lovely. Sorry about this but could you either change the dairy yogurt to dairy-free soya yogurt in the recipe, or could you say that you’ve adapted my dairy-free version (of Sunil’s recipe)? It’s important to me that people don’t think I’ve used dairy in any way as I’m passionate about dairy-free. Thanks so much, Grace
Hi! 🙂 No problem, my mistake. I made de necessary changes in both languages. Gabriele 🙂
Many thanks Gabriele! 🙂