Spicy Turmeric Chicken

This is a crockpot recipe from the recently published, "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker - Recipes for Entertaining," by Beth Hensperger, available from Amazon.com. The heat in NY is steaming - pedestrians have a desperate, sweaty look on their faces and my walk to the supermarket was in tortoise-time. What a perfect day to use my old crockpot; it can sit there for a few hours and cook my dinner - no oven, no range, no opening the oven door to see if it's done. So I have decided to make Beth's Spicy Turmeric Chicken. All I need to do is remove the chicken skin, cover with her Turmeric Marinade, which I made ahead, turn on and forget about it.

Here's the recipe (slightly adapted):

Spicy Turmeric Chicken

Pack of chicken legs and thighs (about 8 pieces)

Turmeric Marinade

1 Tbs. ground cumin seeds
1/2 Tbs. paprika
1 Tbs. ground turmeric
1/2 teasp. cayenne pepper
1 teasp. black pepper
1-1/2 teasp. salt
rounded tsp. of bottled garlic
6 Tbs. freshly squeezed lemon juice (I used orange juice - will see how it turns out; I didn't have any lemon juice.)

Coat the inside of the crock with nonstick cooking spray.

To make the marinade, combine the marinade ingredients in a small bowl or a small food processor. Be warned: The turmeric leaves a yellow stain behind, so use glass or stainless steel implements if you do not want your dishes yellowed. Please also note that this dish will stain a light-colored crock.

Remove the skin from the chicken pieces. Wash and dry the chicken pieces thoroughly.
Apply the marinade generously. Your hands will stain yellow, so use disposable plastic gloves. Place the chicken pieces in the slow cooker, with no liquid. Cover and cook on Low for about 5 hours, or until the meat pulls easily away from the bones. The cooking juices can be reduced or served as is.

Later - Have just sat down to dine - it is delicious. Certainly spicy as it says but tender and tasty. I had to shut Mystery out of the room so he didn't come to help me eat my dinner.

Regarding crockpots, I have also come across a super site for crockpot dishes:A Year of CrockPotting.

Here the blogger, Stephanie, has ingeniously developed a crockpot recipe for each day of the year - my next fancy is a dish of "Mongolian Beef" from her blog.