Not Just a Man's World

I’m including this recipe on here just as I found it.  However it does requires some guidance up front to avoid any confusion. 

Despite being called a marinade, it isn’t a marinade. 

The problem is that I can’t work out what else it could be called since it can be paired with all sorts of different meats and I wouldn’t be doing it justice if I called the recipe “Spicy Tomato Chicken” or something like that.  Apparently the people who originally created the recipe for a magazine had the same problem, since they also called it a marinade.

The recipe creates a thick gungy paste which you slather thickly over the meat just before cooking in the oven.  What comes out at the other end of cooking time is often a bit charred in places but utterly divine in flavour (if you like that sort of thing). 

I did find that the cooked paste then had a tendency to fall off the meat while trying to eat it, and for this reason I don’t recommend basting and then turning the meat and rebasting partway through the cooking time, but at least the sauce is on your plate by then and I think a little of the flavour did permeate the meat.

Paleo spicy tomato marinade

Ingredients (makes enough to cover 2 poussins, which is what the recipe was originally created for, or 12-15 chicken thighs and drumsticks):
4 tbsp tomato puree
1 bunch spring onions, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
5cm piece of fresh ginger root, grated or very finely chopped
4 tsp ground cumin
2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp sweet paprika
2 small green chillies, deseeded and finely chopped
4 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper (freshly ground) to season

2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds for after cooking

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C.
2. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and blitz into a paste with a blender.
3. Spread the paste over the two poussins, chicken pieces, or whatever other meat you want to use it with (it would work well with pork loins or chops, lamb or beef.
4. Place the poussins or chicken in the oven and roast for 50 mins.
5. Once the meat is cooked through (with chicken you can tell by putting a needle or sharp knife into a thick part of the meat as far as the bone – if the juices from the cut run clear, with no pink blood tinges, then the meat is cooked), remove from the oven and sprinkle with the additional 2 tbsp of sesame seeds.

If you are using this recipe for a larger joint (eg. I imagine it would work well slathered over a shoulder of lamb) then it is worth starting the joint off and then adding this partway through cooking (if cooking at a lower temperature then perhaps add the paste an hour before cooking time finishes).

Related posts:

1. Paleo recipes: spicy red cabbage
2. Paleo recipes: spicy pork scratchings
3. Paleo recipes: stock with a pressure cooker
4. Paleo recipes: courgette and tomato au gratin