Red chicken curry

Once again, this is a post written a very long time ago but never got round to posting. Since the stove and oven (now repaired!) were of the fritz, I didn't do any cooking the past few days and the microwave is in the shop for repair (they couldn't repair it on the spot and had to take it away!). I hope to do some cooking over the weekend but that might depend on whether the microwave comes back or not cos I'm quite dependent on it for warming up leftovers. :-)

I'd recently posted about the gadgets in my kitchen with one of them being a Thermomix.

On the first night that I received it, I decided to give it a shot with cooking even though I had not bought it for that purpose (though it's sold and marketed for that reason!). I looked through their community website and found a chicken curry recipe that was fairly simple and it looked like I had all the ingredients on hand. (I didn't want to be out buying ingredients as I was trying to clear the fridge before a trip away).

The chicken curry turned out very tasty although the cooking experience with the Thermomix left much to be desired (I've since become much more of a fan of the Thermomix, which is a great machine if used for the right purpose). That said, I've decided to include the recipe here by converting it from a Thermomix recipe to a regular recipe that anyone can use.

Here's the RECIPE for a simple red chicken curry:

Ingredients:

• 500g chicken thighs cut into bite size pieces
• 1 tomato quartered
• 1 can 400ml coconut milk
• 1 tablespoon dark sugar
• 5 tablespoons oil
• Salt to taste

Ingredients for spices:

• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ginger minced
• 2 brown onions finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons tumeric
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 2 tablespoons chili paste (sambal olek)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

Instructions:

• Add onion, ginger, oil and spices into a pot and cook for 5 - 7 minutes on a moderately high heat until the everything starts to brown
• Put in half the can of coconut milk and bring to boil, then simmer for 5 minutes
• Add remaining coconut milk, tomato, chicken, sugar. Bring to boil and simmer for 30 minutes covered
• Add salt to season and adjust to taste. Then bring back to boil and simmer for another 30 minutes covered

Note: this will cook the curry fairly quickly but still give it some deeper flavor from the simmering. If you want to really let the flavors catch, I would suggest using a cast iron pot and on the last simmer, put the pot into the oven at 90 degrees C for 1 or 2 hours, depending on your timing and when you want to eat.

When I was cooking this in the Thermomix, it being my first time cooking with the machine and needing to clear out my fridge, I got quite creative with my ingredients. To say that I did not follow the recipe exactly would have been putting it mildly.

Here's what went down:

• I used less chicken because there were only the 2 of us eating - so it was only 4 chicken thigh pieces that I used. I didn't weigh them, but I'm guessing it's less than 500g
• I had about 2/3 a punnet of grape tomatoes in the fridge that needed to be eaten (no regular tomatoes) so I used all of those instead, which is a lot more than just 1 tomato
• There was a large lump of ginger that needed to be used up as well, so instead of 1/2 teaspoon of ginger, I think I ended up with maybe 1 1/2 tablespoons of ginger
• I didn't have tumeric, so I used curry powder instead
• I didn't have ground coriander (who knew there were so many spices I didn't have?) and I chiffonaded (is that even a word?) a handful of fresh coriander instead and used that
• I was generous with the chili paste and used 2 generous heaped tablespoons and then for a little extra zing, I added a 1/2 teaspoon of my special blend of chili powder. Don't do this if you do not like a lot of heat in your curry
• Oh yeah, since I was doing it in the Thermomix, I skipped a step and forgot to fry off the spices. Totally stuffed that up and I think it would have tasted even better than it did, if I had done that step properly

I served it with some brown rice and steamed broccoli (done the old fashioned way *grin*) and it turned into a very nice dinner.

Are you a fan of curries? Do you like them mild, medium or hot? Ever tried one that's super hot? Red, green or yellow curries for you? Any particular ethnicity of curries you are specially fond of? Indian? Thai? Malaysian?



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Satay chicken with garlic spiral pasta

As you can tell from the previous post, this dinner was really a "what have I got in the cupboard" dinner. I scrounged for what was around and then cooked up something. I'm also pleased that it turned out to be very tasty (I think the seasoning might have helped).

Here's what I did ...

For the satay chicken: (note I've rounded off the quantities since I was left with bits and pieces in the fridge)

Ingredients:

• 1 jar Kan Tong peanut sauce (or any other peanut sauce will do)
• 1 green capsicum cut into bit size squares
• 1 onion cut into bite size pieces and separated
• 1 large carrot sliced in about 1.5mm pieces
• 3 cloves of garlic finely chopped
• 4 pieces of chicken thigh cut into bite size pieces
• Peanut or olive oil for cooking
• Salt for seasoning
• Chili flakes and pepper for spice (optional)

Instructions:

• Cut up the ingredients into the appropriate size pieces
• Warm up a frying pan or wok and add oil
• When oil is slightly warm but not smoking, add garlic and cook slightly (do not brown)
• Add capsicum, carrot and onion and cook gently for 3 or 4 minutes, until cooked but still crunchy. The onion should not be translucent, if it is, you have overcooked it
• Remove vegetables from the wok
• Add a little more oil
• Put in chicken and cook thoroughly
• When chicken is cooked, add vegetables back into wok
• Pour in peanut sauce and bring to boil
• Season to taste and serve

For the spiral pasta: (I made pasta because I did not have any rice in the pantry)

Ingredients:

• A quantity of spiral pasta (whatever the amount you think you are going to eat)
• 3 cloves of garlic minced
• 3 tablespoons peanut oil (I used this to go with the peanut sauce rather than olive oil)
• Salt to season

Instructions:

• Boil water with some salt in it
• Put spiral pasta into boiled water for 9 minutes (that should cook it till it's al dente)
• When pasta is 2 minutes away from cooking, heat up a pan
• Put oil and garlic in pan with a little salt to season and cook gently, do not brown or burn the garlic
• When pasta is cooked, drain pasta, put into pan with garlic and oil
• Toss pasta in pan till it's covered with the oil and garlic evenly
• Serve with satay chicken

This turned out to be a very delicious meal and I have to say that surprised me considering I had just thrown it together from whatever was left in the pantry and fridge.


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Coq Au Vin

This is a carry over from the French themed dinner party that I talked about earlier. I had posted the recipe for the French Onion soup but not the Coq Au Vin, so I'm doing it now.

But before I do that, do you know that I always thought that browning something in a pan before cooking it in a casserole pot was a pain in the rear end? Those were back in my lazy and ignorant days, days where I did not know much about cooking (not that I know that much more now) and I did not know the importance of browning. Learning to cook changed all that. The reason for making this point here? You need to brown the chicken going into the Coq Au Vin and it's rather tedious in my opinion. Yes, I said it, I think browning is tedious. Important but tedious.

I had fun with this recipe because there were so many bits a pieces to it and I was in the mood. It's not terribly complicated or difficult to make, but lining up the ingredients and getting it all ready to plonk into the casserole pot took a bit (either that or I'm just slow!).

Here's the RECIPE:

Ingredients:

• 8 pieces of chicken thigh with bone and skin on (2 pieces per person)
• 60gram butter
• 4 bacon rashers, chopped
• 16 baby onions
• 2 cloves crushed garlic
• 1 sprig thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• 500ml dry red wine
• 250ml brown or white chicken stock
• 60ml brandy
• 2tbsp tomato paste
• 250gram button mushrooms

Instructions:

• Cut chicken into serving size pieces and toss in flour.
• Melt butter in a large frying pan and brown the chicken.
• Remove chicken from the pan and set aside, keep warm.
• Drain all but 1tbsp of fat from the pan.
• Add onions and sauté until onions are browned.
• Add bacon and garlic and sauté for 2 minutes.
• Add red wine, brandy, stock and tomato paste and herbs
• Return chicken to pan, bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
• Add mushrooms and simmer uncovered for another 10 minutes.
• Adjust seasoning to taste.

The Coq Au Vin turned out to be very tasty and very rich.

I made 16 pieces of chicken, so my recipe was a bit larger than the one above, since I was feeding 8 people. Also, my chicken thigh pieces were very large, so it ended up filling my casserole pot right to the brim. In fact, it was so full that by the time I added the mushrooms at the end, the gravy was spilling over and I had to scoop up a bowl of it to avoid a small lake around my stove top. I did add that bowl of gravy back in later after some of the liquid had boiled down.

The chicken thighs are very tasty but does have some fat in it. The cooking will melt the fat off the chicken and you'll end up with an oily layer on the top. Skim that off with a spoon and discard.

The bacon in the recipe adds a lot of flavor to the dish, so there's no need to put salt into it. If you do want to add salt, taste it first before doing so. You don't want to over season.

I used a bottle of the 1989 Lindemans St George from the Hunter Valley, which is a Cabernet Sauvignon and a bit of 2001 Cockfighter's Ghost Shiraz also from the Hunter Valley. I know you're going to think: what? a 1989 vintage? Shouldn't you be drinking something of that vintage?? but the wine is past it's peak and was slightly off. It's still drinkable but The Boy is fussy about his wine and decided that it would be real nice for cooking - which it was.

The gravy from the dish is fabulous. We had it on the night with truffle mash potatoes but with the leftovers, I cooked up some spaghetti and used the gravy as my spaghetti sauce. It was super yummy.



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