Truly Scrumptious

This is a nice way of making Nandos style chicken. In Australia we can’t get the mango and lime basting any longer, so I make my own.
The chicken is better if marinated for 2 days, but you will still get some nice flavours after an hour of marination. Buy enough chicken to feed your guests – you can buy it as portions, but I prefer to buy a whole free-range chicken and joint it, because it tastes nicer if the bones and skin are still intact.
Once you have your chicken jointed, place it in a large bowl. There are a few ways of making the marinade, you can use either fresh or tinned mangoes, or mango chutney. The quantities may vary depending on how sweet you like the result, but half a fresh mango, 2 tablespoons of mango chutney or half a tin of mangoes should be enough for one chicken.
Then you will need the juice of 2-3 limes. If using fresh or tinned mangoes, chop them into small pieces and mash them a little with a fork. Start by adding the juice of a lime and taste it. If it tastes sweet, add the juice of another lime. It seems to sweeten up a bit during the marinating process so err on the side of slightly sour rather than slightly sweet. Now add a pinch of salt and a spoonful of chicken stock powder to the marinade and spread it over the chicken pieces. Cover the bowl with cling film and place it in the fridge, turn the pieces regularly – if you are marinating them for a few days, turn them twice a day to make sure they get a good coating.

On the day you are cooking, set the oven to 180 deg C. Take enough potatoes for your guests – I allow a large potato each and cut your potatoes into chip sized pieces. You can do wedges if you prefer. I leave the skin on because it tastes nice and I can’t be bothered to peel them.
Toss the potatoes in a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and bake them in a baking tray – they will take around 30 minutes depending on how good your oven is, and the chicken will take about 40 minutes, so put the spuds in first, then after 10 minutes put the chicken in. I put my chicken and chips in trays lined with baking parchment or foil to save on washing up. Make sure that the chicken is nicely coated with the marinade.
If using spray oil for your chips – a word of caution – don’t spray it on your best non-stick pans. The aerosol in spray oil damages the Teflon coating. I found this out to my cost when I used it on two of my beautiful Circulon fry pans.
You can also use sweet potatoes, but they will not take as long as regular potatoes, so put them in at the same time as the chicken and cut them into large chips.
While the cooking is happening, make the chip salt by mixing the following:

1 tablespoon of onion powder (I ground up some dried onion flakes) do not use onion salt it is too salty
1 tablespoon of smoked paprika
1 teaspoon of ground coriander
half a teaspoon of cumin
quarter to a half teaspoon of chilli depending on your spice tolerance
a quarter of a teaspoon of allspice
a quarter of a teaspoon of salt
a quarter of a teaspoon of pepper

Mix the spices together – you can double up these quantities if you have a lot of chips.
When the chips are done sprinkle them with the spice mixture.
Serve the chicken and chips with buttered sweetcorn and peas.
If you want to make perinaise chip dip, add a dash of tabasco or chilli paste to some mayonnaise.