Tandoori Chicken Tray Bake

This is another delicious chicken traybake recipe using Tandoori paste for maximum flavour. For busy  cooks who are time poor, traybakes can be our saviour. By now, you will know how much I love a traybake.

Traybakes are easy to assemble, very versatile and are on rotation in my kitchen at least once a week but are never boring. The first time I made this one, it became a Gochujang chicken traybake instead of Tandoori, and included other vegetable substitutions as well. I had my heart set on a traybake and the chicken needed to be used. I was craving some chicken, and we were just back from our holiday to Cairns in Far North Queensland, so I was settling back into my kitchen. I substituted quite a few of the recipe elements with what I had on hand, and it was still delicious. 

I used Gochujang paste instead of the Tandoori paste, pumpkin for the cauliflower and broccoli for the kale, bottled capsicum halves for the cherry tomatoes, so it was a real fusion of flavours but it worked well and was delicious.  The Gochujang paste packed quite a punch but we like spicy food. I wouldn't cook for children with Gochujang though in this type of dish. Tandoori would be fine. However, despite all of those other substitutions, I didn't change the base of chickpeas and red onions. These absorbed all of the beautiful flavours from the other ingredients. Leftovers the following day had improved even more in flavour. 

This recipe is really about the Tandoori chicken traybake, and I've waffled on enough, but I had to share how wonderful the Gochujang also tasted, so you have two recipes instead of one.

Gochujang chicken traybake

This Tandoori chicken recipe is based on the original one from the latest edition of the Australian Women's Weekly magazine (June 2024), which has our lovely, iconic Australian home cook, Maggie Beer, on the front cover. No promotion intended. I receive the AWW every month thanks to my very thoughtful daughter who bought me an annual subscription as part of my Christmas present last year. Such a great gift. I love receiving it in our letterbox each month. It always brings me joy to receive it. Do you purchase many magazines?  I still enjoy sitting down with a cuppa and reading through a good quality, but not gossipy, and mainly Aussie magazine, instead of being glued to the computer, phone or TV screen for all of my information.

According to the Australian Market Research Company, Roy Morgan, in February 2024,  Australian readership of magazines was up 3.6%. from a year ago which is quite substantial, with increases in 12/16 categories. Not surprisingly as well, the most popular categories for magazine purchases are Food and Entertainment followed by Home and Garden magazines.

9 of the top 10 magazines increased their readership over the last 12 months with Better Homes and Gardens and the Australian Women's Weekly the most widely read paid magazines. With all of the online articles available now it seems that some people like me, still like to mix up their reading matter, and read from a quality magazine and a real book. Are you part of this trend? However, I love that you read my online blog, and I really enjoy reading many of yours and being part of the blogging community.

Let's Cook:

Ingredients: 

Serves 4

1/4 cup (75g) tandoori paste

1/2 cup (140 g) natural yoghurt

8 (1.5g) chicken thigh fillets, (I prefer bone in, skin on)

400 g can chickpeas, drained, rinsed

1 large (250 g) red onion, cut into wedges

1 small (1 kg) cauliflower, cut into wedges, leaves attached

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

100 g cherry tomatoes ( cherry truss tomatoes if you can get them are optional)

60 g trimmed kale leaves

steamed rice, for serving

Method:

Preheat your oven to 220 deg. C (200 deg. C fan-forced)

In a large bowl, combine the tandoori paste and yoghurt, then add the chicken and coat the pieces with the paste. Season with some salt and freshy ground pepper. 

Line a large baking tray with baking paper, and spread the chickpeas and onion over the paper. Try to avoid overcrowding your tray. Top with the cauliflower wedges and position the chicken pieces in amongst the cauliflower, and drizzle over the olive oil. Bake for 20 minutes.

Remove the tray carefully from the oven, and add the tomatoes and kale. Bake for another 15-20 minutes until the vegetables start browning and the chicken is cooked through.

Sprinkle with some finely chopped parsley if you wish and have it on hand. (Unfortunately my parsley plants died during all of the recent rain, so I don't always have it on hand now.)

Serve with steamed rice.

Chickpeas and onions in the tray first

Add the cauliflower and snuggle in the chicken

After cooking the chicken and cauliflower, add the kale and tomatoes

The fresh kale crisps up during the cooking process

Cooking tips:

• Because I am only cooking for two, after baking this dish I reserve 2 chicken fillets, and leftover cauliflower, chickpeas and onions, or kale for Meal 2 the following night. It reheats in the microwave perfectly. More green vegetables can be added for the 2nd meal.
• Although this recipe uses 8 chicken thigh fillets for 4 people, I used the chicken cutlets with bone in and skin on and with all of the vegetables and rice included, 1 cutlet each was plenty for us. 
• If you can find cherry truss tomatoes at a reasonable price, these are lovely to serve with a meal for dinner guests to improve the presentation, however any small individual tomatoes will do the same job. I actually used roasted capsicum pieces from a bottle instead of tomatoes, the first time I made this traybake which were very tasty as well.
• If you are not a kale convert, broccoli is a very suitable green vegetable substitution, or even green peas are delicious in traybakes. Add the peas frozen and they will cook perfectly. A green vegetable brings attractive colour to any dish.
• I still had 1/2 tub of Gochujang paste in the refrigerator, after making my Gochujang and Seasonal Vegetable Traybake a while ago. It was the perfect substitution for the Tandoori paste.

These are photos from the Gochujang Chicken traybake I made based on today's recipe. Be creative, and substitute other elements into your traybakes, this saves you money, and creates some very delicious and interesting dishes along the way.

Add some chopped pumpkin, I left the skins on 

Gochujang chicken traybake

Tandoori chicken traybake

Hoping you have a very enjoyable week. We are enjoying the Autumn sunshine, it's arrived at last.

Warm wishes,

Pauline