Butterfly Chicken

I was watching a Chinese cooking show the other day and this chef was cooking a butterfly chicken.  He called it African Chicken and the hostess mentioned that it was Portuguese Style.  That raised up my curiosity and after googling from the internet and that's what I found.  It was the Portuguese explorers and settlers took the chilli and BBQ method to the Africa long ago, this style of chicken is called Piri Piri Chicken.  If you are interested for further reading,  please click here

I don't want to make this chicken hot so I am playing around with the spices a bit with this recipe.  I also use the marinated chicken for easy roasting from the supermarket so I don't put extra salt onto the chicken and I can put the chicken straight to the oven after rubbing with the marinate.  I like the potato of this dish as it absorbs the flavour from the chicken.  You can roast the whole chicken instead of butterfly it or you may like to BBQ it.  I would use a smaller chicken for BBQ though.  Please click here to view the video if you want to know how to butterfly a chicken.

Butterfly Chicken

2.1 kg marinated chicken (if you are using plain chicken, add some salt and/or chicken powder and marinate the chicken 1 hour before hand)
3 heap tablespoons tomato paste
3/4 tablespoon turmeric powder
3/4 tablespoon piparka
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon garlic
pepper
(you can add some chilli powder if you like it hot)

Method:

1. Rinse the chicken and clean the inside.  Follow the video listed above to cut the chicken into butterfly shape.
2. Rub the chicken with the tomato paste, herb and seasoning.  Place it into a baking tray.
3. Lay the side with potatoes, drizzle some oil and season the potatoes with salt.
4. Bake the chicken at 180c for 1hour and 40 mins or until the juice comes out clean when you insert a skewer into its thigh.  Serve it with steam vegetables.

Tip: for every 500g chicken, cook it for 20-25 minutes.