Picture a Day - Day 147

Last night was our first big curry experiment. I crawled pub med looking for some papers on curry and their affects on gastronomy only to be led in circles to an experiment I'm pretty sure never existed in this reality (sorry, science joke there. I'll stop now).

So instead I turned to the little pamphlet that came inside our box of spices. The first mission, should you choose to accept it, make a simple chicken curry.

The main ingredient (aside from the chicken of course) is our Maharajah Curry Powder and helping out our friend is Garam Marsala. Scary names but you can probably get a curry powder at most grocery stores. The garam marsala is a bit harder to track down, but it isn't necessary.

Heaven help me I actually have a recipe here. Hang on. I know I put it somewhere. Ah here we go.

• 1 lb chicken
• 2 TB butter (or just enough to slick up a pan good)
• 1 tsp Ground Ginger
• 2 cloves of garlic (or as many as you want if you're anti-vampires)
• 2 tsp Curry powder
• 1 tsp garam marsala
• 1/2 cup water plus 2 TB
• 1 cup plain yogurt (I love all these recipes that call for plain yogurt. It's so sad what we've done to the poor thing here. Declaring it just for dieters and ripping all the very helpful fat out or deciding it's perfect for incontinent people and adding more fiber than a shipping box. Yogurt really need a better agent).

The first step is to combine all the dry spices in a small bowl and add the 2 TB of water over top.

While that's busy getting wet, mince up the garlic and chicken (well cube it, mincing it would be pretty silly).

Saute the garlic in the butter, then dump in your wet spice mix. Stir quickly and stir often as it'll clumpify. You're looking for a smooth paste. I fear I didn't stir enough because ours came out kinda clumpy but I had a bigger fear of it all burning. I still have to come up with a better answer.

Once it's a smooth paste add the chicken, saute to get the sides a bit then add the water. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes stirring when you remember. Add the yogurt and raise the heat to remove some excess water. In about 10 minutes you should have a thick sauce that's a lovely gold color.

It doesn't look the prettiest but aside from the weird clumps it tasted really good.
This curry isn't hot at all, just spicy. I can easily see some people's tongues getting overwhelmed by all the flavors, but my husband loves it. He all but licked the plate clean.

If you want to get into curry in anyway this is a good starting point. It isn't going to knock your socks off, but it still has that familiar curry flavor and fairly simple ingredients.

Does anyone else have a favorite curry recipe we could try? We still have the balti I'm not sure of. Maybe when summer is in high season and we get lots of tasty fresh veggies to try a more subtle veggie curry.

What's your favorite "ethnic" food? Do you venture a lot away from what you had growing up or are you more likely to stick with your few tested recipes?