When life gives you lemons

You can make lemonade, key lime pie, lemon mousse, lemon achaar, lemon sugar, lemon scented meringue pie, lemon frosting, lemon scented glass noodle salad, lemon rice saaar?or even lemon caviar if your a whacko like me. That's just something I do for fun because I realised I had this crazy trick that anything I saw I can replicate once and then the next time I make it Id just change the recipe around so realistically when I see a recipe I now have two working drafts in my head. 

This is really helpful during a food trial when the employer wants to see if you can think on your feet or on the fly. Something like that happened when I decided to make a chicken recipe . Now I don't have access to kaffir lime leaves, or lemon grass stalks so I had to get innovative with it. This led me to this idea of concocting a reduction and using it as a marinade to steep the chicken in. OK Na? not that bad so what do i make this of? lemongrass. Also locally known as chai patti for the fact that it's boiled an consumed as tea. I made a larger concoction by boiling it down and a little reduciton which I cooled and used to steep the chicken supreme in. Now you can easily opt for chicken supreme to skewer on or like me if your pinching pennies you can slice the boneless piece of breast at a 45 angle to get slivers of it and then skewer them on to satay sticks. I picked up  about 100 sticks from Crawford market for 40 Rs. which is pretty reasonable. I bought nearly 1 kg of boneless chicken which yielded about 50skewers so you now know how thin each sliver must be.

You can go all mad scientist once your reduction is made , try adding different flavor combinations because lemongrass lends itself to numerous combinations from cranberry to cinnamon the list is as varied as you can imagine. I chose pepper and oregano because their flavors are one, very distinct and something that work wonderfully with the lemongrass. I allowed the chicken to marinade overnight and finished on a hot griddle, remember to drain out any liquid, if your meat is wet be it steak or chicken it will not colour. Always dry meats before searing them on a hot grill or griddle. Colour and set aside this takes about a minute on each side tops. The rest of the lemon grass which I boiled to a green mix was now still hot, to it I added some sugar and a single drop of green colouring liquid and chilled with some ice for my guests to enjoy as a soothing welcome drink. Feel free to send me some new ideas when it comes to stuff like drinks and mocktails cause I'm going through a very fruity mocktail phase now. You can also serve these up with a little Japanese mayo or a little cocktail dressing. 

Lemon and oregano skewers (1kg makes 50 pieces) Rs 2.2 per portion

Ingredients

Lemon grass - 1 bundle

Salt- 10 gms

Oregano- 30 gms

Ginger garlic paste- 50 gms

Procedure:

• Make a decoction of the lemon grass and let it cool.
• Cut and marinate the chicken in the cooled marinade and Leave over night
• Season 
• Grill on a grill or griddle