curry

the joy of someone else's cooking

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coconut chicken and okra

You might well say that I have no business posting this dish. I didn’t pick out the recipe and I did none of the cooking; in fact, I came home from work late one evening and it was all finished and waiting for me! And not only did he cook, he took pictures! Yes, I have a wonderful husband.

Dinner was a chicken curry with a coconut-cilantro-chile-mustard seed sauce, served over basmati rice with a side of spiced okra. The sauce was really tasty, very rich and spicy with a strange impression of peanut butter (maybe that was just me?). The chicken was so tender it fell apart when we touched it with our forks. We would definitely make this one again. Continue reading →

chicken with lemongrass and lime leaf

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chicken curry

It may not look like it from the picture, but this was really good (taking appetizing pictures of stewed chicken can be mighty tricky).

The library recently acquired a copy of the book 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer. I checked it out, we made two recipes out of it and promptly bought our own copy. It’s a great book, written in a humorous, comfortable tone and full of a huge selection of curries from all over India. I knew I had to have it when I had counted something like 15 different recipes for okra.

Last weekend at the farmer’s market we were thrilled to find fresh lemongrass at the Hedlin farmstand. This was exciting enough that we searched our cookbooks looking for something that would really show off the flavor, and we landed on this lemongrass-lime leaf chicken curry from the new book. J made it while I was at work, and let me tell you – the house smelled really good when I got home. He also took all these pictures, since I wasn’t around – so yeah, I’m really just the reporter on this one.

chicken curry

First he marinated whole boneless chicken thighs in ginger, garlic and salt. Continue reading →

curry & parathas

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herbs for chicken-tomato curry

One disadvantage of this otherwise rather nice town is that there is not a single Indian restaurant. During the time we’ve lived here there have been two: a decent enough place attached to a motel that turned into (yet another) Mexican restaurant a couple years ago, and a really great place with a real tandoori oven, which turned into an office furniture shop. Now there’s nothin’. This is part of the reason we cook so much Indian food at home. Besides, it’s fun.

We had friends over last weekend, and fixed up a pretty standard set of dishes to take care of any Indian cravings: red lentil dal, basmati rice, spiced okra, flatbread and chicken curry. The bread and the curry were (pretty safe) experiments: I made paratha for the first time, and the curry was the Chicken Simmered in a Tomato Sauce (very straightforward title) from Meena Pathak’s book.

spices for chicken-tomato curry Continue reading →