Spicy lemon chicken

A Middle Eastern-ish tea for a distinctly English spring day (grey and rainy).

It's dead easy to make, but you do need to marinate the chicken for a while - a couple of hours will do, but longer would be even better.

You'll need:

2 chicken breasts (either flattened with a rolling pin - most satisfying - or sliced into long strips)
3 tablespoons lemon juice (which probably works out at 1 lemon)
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon ground coriander
a slosh of olive oil
a handful of fresh mint, finely chopped

To make the marinade, chuck all the spices, olive oil, lemon juice and mint into a (non-metallic) bowl, and swish it all about. Drop in the chicken breasts, and make sure the marinade is spooned all over them.

A couple of hours later, coat a griddle pan with a little olive oil, and put onto a high heat. Take the chicken breasts out of the marinade (if there's any left you can discard it), and sear quickly on both sides in the pan. Turn the heat down a little, and leave the chicken to cook through - it'll take 5-10 minutes, depending on how thick your pieces are. You'll probably need to slice one in half, just to check whether it's done.

We ate this with a couscous salad and pitta bread. I reckon it would be a good barbecue dish in the summer - the chargrilled taste would really suit it.