Spicy roasted drumsticks

Simplest dinner *and* lunch I've ever made in my entire life (upto and including boiled potatoes with ghee and green chillies in white rice).

In India roasts like this are often served as snacks or as appetizers before dinner. When eaten as snacks, people usually peel the meat off the bone and eat it with a basic cucumber-tomato-red onion salad with a lemon juice dressing. Others eat it like a gyro, putting it inside a pita bread or a roti or paratha with the above-mentioned salad and some salt. It is a *very* versatile dish, and a snap to make.

Ingredients:
Drumsticks (or thighs, or maybe even breasts).
Olive oil (or mustard oil)
Chillie flakes and/or chillie powder and/or green or red chillie paste.
Salt, pepper, a little sugar.
Garlic paste (optional)
Strained beaten yougurt (optional)

To give it a sweet and tangy edge:
Home-ground garam masala powder (use a coffee-grinder)--cinnamon sticks, cloves, cardamom without the skin. About a teaspoon for four drumsticks.
Aamchoor--it's dried mangoes, dry-ground into a powder.
If aamchoor is hard to come by, then tamarind paste (shop-bought is fine).
If tamarind and aamchor are too exotic, lemon juice. But it doesn't have the same taste.

How to:
Mix everything but the oil and chicken. If not using yogurt, it should just be a powdery mix, depending on whether or not chillie, tamarind and garlic paste is being used (pastes being moist, would make the mix slightly moist and thick). Make deep gashes on the drumsticks so the spice can flavour the meat inside too. Coat both sides of each drumstick with it generously and smooth some paste into the gashes. Lay it out on an aluminium foil-lined baking tray with the skin facing you. Or you could peel the skin, it's just that the skin makes the roast more crunchy.



Now pour on the oil and mix it in with the chicken. Preheat oven at 425F. Pop the tray in. Roast for between 30 to 45 minutes. At the end of it, check for crispiness and tenderness. Each drumstick should be both.

See the glistening oil? That's how much you need. Don't scrimp.

Inside the oven

Outside the oven

I ate mine with mashed potatoes.

Leftovers for lunch.