Warning: This dish needs marinading

I mean, I checked last night. I knew this dish needed marinading, ideally for a few hours. I had plenty of time over lunch to whip together the ingredients, and would quite have liked the break after 2.5 hours of solid meeting calls. 

Did I? Did I heck as like. I had a rather bored lunch doing my puzzles and some Duolingo (which is really hard now you lose lives for errors, this may be the lockdown thing that breaks me). Worked for a bit, schlepped shopping over to my parents, came home and got back to work... and remembered I needed to marinade. 

I felt weird about this because I twote my walk, as #UnconfinedWalks, which makes it sound like fun. Work do know about my "caring responsibilities", and we were recently encouraged to get out in the light rather than working through the day from home. But I always feel bad about taking such a chunk out of the working day twice a week. I just can't face doing that round trip (90-120 minutes depending on queues, weather, how much checking on the folks I need to do, how many shops, how desperately I need to vary the route etc) after a full day's work. So usually I catch up on work into evening, and do not faff around with marinading. But here we are, I had a really lousy dinner last night (will not blog, it wasn't interestingly bad, just tedious), and I can't face another one, so I binned off work at 4.30 to do yet more domestic duty for a bit.

 

This is one of those marinades which are easy but have a billion spices in. It's fine for those proud Confined Kitcheneers who have excellent spice cupboards, but not if you're feeling rushed and furtive - just some fresh coriander, ginger, garlic, oil, vinegar (this is a Goan chicken dish, so Portuguese cooking like vindaloo for vinegar, just not that hot)... and then cumin, cardamom, cloves, star anise, fennel, turmeric, cinnamon... yeah. I took the bowl over to the spice heap, instead of doing it one at a time. Some of these were meant to be whole and freshly ground, but I went for everything pre-ground for speed, and just whizzed up the fresh herbs.

 

It's an interesting mix of spices - I've realised over summer I cooked fresh but pretty bland stuff, to the point where I went to Wagamama at the weekend just for pork buns because I miss spices. I really haven't eaten out this year, and eating alone isn't much fun ever, let alone just now when it comes with a side of possible infection. I'd better do something about that in home recipes - like this one.

Because this was a really good dish. It only had a couple of hours to rest before 30 mins in a 200deg oven, with a few onion rings and seeds scattered over (sesame, not the poppy seeds required). And it charred up nicely.

 Not hot spices, obviously. There should have been chilli in there if I could eat it, but I don't think it would be scalding anyway. Almost a sweet edge to the mix, and a really nice edge of complexity, without being a great big curry-type spice dish. Will make again. 

 

And I'm glad some of you joined #UnconfinedWalks today - lots of walkers, in fact. I know I'm being daft feeling bad about doing some family stuff and getting a walk in in daylight along the way. It's just a part of this strange life we're all living, and perfectly okay as routine. I hope I'll keep it up over the damp days to come, and I hope some of you will join me :-)