Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Chicken Curry

I try to change it up here in Chez Stadium. Of course, Cookie Monster and I have our favorites--pasta, salad, garlic toast, sauteed vegetables, etc.--but you gotta branch out now and again, you know? (One of us--I won't say who--requests cookies for dinner almost daily. But I won't say who, to protect this monster's privacy.)

So here we have VCK's foray into the Wonderful World of Indian (and/or Thai) cooking. Hey, wouldn't that be a cool TV show? "So, what'd you do last night?" "I watched The Wonderful World of Indian and/or Thai Cooking! It was interesting and/or informative!"

I don't know if this is technically an Indian dish. It could be Thai since it has coconut milk. But I'm not too worried about technicalities here. Will it be good? Will it go in my tummy? Sold!

For this dish, I actually followed a recipe. Gasp! I wanted to do this since I really have no idea what I'm doing in this genre of food, so I figured a solid template would be appropriate. Here is the recipe I used. However, I still did not measure anything, and I most certainly did not use the 1/4 cup oil it calls for. Blech! That is way too much oil! I added some zucchini, as well as a little bit of harissa to add some spice.

Here we have the curry cooking away:

And here is the finished product. I served it over brown rice, and with it I warmed up some of Trader Joe's frozen naan and some mango chutney.

Verdict: It was pretty good, but missing something. It lacked that depth of flavor that most curries have, be they Indian or Thai. It's probably because the restaurants put copious amounts of ghee or other really-bad-for-you ingredients into their curries. I think next time I would add more of the spices it calls for.

This is a good introduction into this type of food. It didn't take long to cook and it was a satisfying, fairly healthy meal. I recommend it.



2 comments:

dp said...

Curries are very near and dear to my heart, especially the Thai type. It's great you tried making this at home! It will get better every time you do.

The curry you made is Indian. They often use coconut milk as well. For depth of flavor, I would recommend using mustard oil or ghee. You may also try using whole spices like cumin seeds, whole cloves and cinnamon sticks instead of the ground spices. I like fry these spices in the mustard oil or ghee right from the beginning to release their aromas. Then add the garlic, ginger and onion, etc. Also you could substitute chicken broth for water.

Here's some more info on Thai green curry and Thai red curry, if you're interested.

VCK said...

Thanks, dp! I'll definitely check those out. It may even give me an excuse to go to Uwajimaya!