Blasphemous curry
Rushing through recipes and food is like rushing through the talking stage. We would all love that, but the taste in the end really does a bang-up job at explaining why in food and love, patience is key and you really shouldn't rush.
Let's get to my favorite labor of love. Ingredients,
marinating, and then cooking. Today we will be making the first meal I learned
how to make because I fell in love with a restaurant dish.
Quick disclaimer: This is not ''real'' Indian curry, so do not come
for me. This is my version of chicken with rice that just so happens to center around curry as a spice mix, so I am shamelessly trying to capitalize on the name CURRY.
Ingredients: :
- Chicken Breasts (500 gr) - you can do tofu and it would be equally good, maybe even better, so see how you're feeling and decide, I was feeling poultry, regretted it, but was feeling it (relationship flashbacks)
- Golden Onions (1 big one) - We covered why I call them golden, should I change it up?
- Curry powder (Okay, so here comes the Balkan grandmother in me, you put as much as you would like to taste, curry for me is a ''suffocating'' type of spice, meaning, there is such a thing as too much, I put enough for me to smell it, so let's say 3 teaspoons)
- Vegeta ( Balkan MSG, and if you do not know it or don't have it, you can use any type of dried vegetable mix with salt or MSG added in) + (1 and a half teaspoons)
- Tumeric powder (one teaspoon should do)
- Spring onions ( here you need 2- I hate that in the English language, these are spring onions, in Montenegrin we like to call them young onions which is what they are hehe)
- Red pepper ( half of the pointy one, don't judge me, you can click and see what I mean)
- Two cloves of garlic ( super hot tip, crush it with the blade's flat side, IF YOU REMEMBER THE HARRY POTTER REFERENCE, marry me)
- Mutti Tomato Sauce (I personally love this brand and would recommend the 400gr glass bottle if you can find it, if not, any tomato can or sauce that is JUST TOMATO will do)
- Cow milk and a spoon of flour (250 ml of milk + one teaspoon of all-purpose flour, here is the main blasphemy, in real curry you go with full-fat coconut milk, which also makes this vegan if you go with tofu instead of chicken)
- One soup base cube (chicken flavor)
- Olive oil and half a lemon of lemon juice
- Rice ( I bought a pack that is apparently produced in Bijelo Polje, which I loved, I used one drinking glass for a two-people serving of rice, I will explain I promise)
Preparation:
- We are going to start with chopping everything up. Get a bowl big enough for the chicken and the vegetables. Cut the chicken into cubes (please wash your chicken first in an empty sink, and after you cut it on the board, wash the board, we do not approve of salmonella). Finely chop the spring onions, pepper, and garlic (here if you like parsley, you can add it). Then comes the fun part, add the curry, turmeric, and Vegeta. After the spices squeeze half a lemon into the mix and add olive oil to combine. Cover the bowl and let sit for an hour in the fridge.
You can now also start cooking your rice. In case this is your first time, here are some rice-cooking tips:
1. Wash your rice three times, drain the water completely every time;
2. Next add two drinking glasses of water and put on max heat, if you have a poor person or weak stove like I do, if not, mid-heat is okay;
3. You can stir or not stir the rice, the pros just leave it on low heat after the water boils and after it's cooked they cover it; I am an ass and I stir it so it doesn't stick, and I also get that nice fluffy rice, so you can do whatever you want just do not burn it!
After you see that the sauce is almost like a paste, you add the marinated chicken, and cook for another 15-20 minutes, until tender and cooked through. Then add the chicken stock, stir in, and let cook for about 10 minutes.
The next step is to add our thickening potion, flour, and milk. Stir well and cook until the sauce looks thick and the chicken can be easily cut with a fork.
Bonus tips: Never worry if it fails the
first time, just cook for your own taste buds. Because we feel constantly
judged we forget that cooking should be based on your taste, and you should
create your own unique foods inspired by the world and the neatly written works
of others! Have fun and be blasphemous!
Wild Pomegranate Juice
Whenever my heart wavers and I get a little bit too tired and anxious to cook myself into love again, I find solace in recalling the ritual of crafting my least favorite homemade juice.
When I was little, I used to go pick the wild pomegranates with my mother. I would clumsily pry them open with dull knives and hit their skin with the handle, forcing the seeds to fall on their own into a bowl held by my thighs. I used to fall asleep with the open fruit in my hand, but I never dropped a single seed.
My fingers would turn red, like the juice the seeds carried, and I never understood how come my mother's hands and fingernails were permanently black and darkened, even more so during pomegranate season. Weren’t they supposed to just be red like mine? I made wild pomegranate juice with her until I turned 15 years old.
My mother’s fingers were a mystery until my grandmother got sick and forgot who we were. It was a candle-lit night in a house we didn't own, the electricity went out and this wrinkly, blue-eyed stranger told me the story of her youngest daughter and her incredible recipe for pomegranate juice. While in her mind both her sons and her other two daughters were gone, she knew the amount of sugar that goes into the recipe was too much, but she loved watching her daughter instruct her granddaughter to add it into the brew, and she playfully claimed the extra kilogram made the scene last longer, so she stayed silent. I was 14 years old, and my grandmother died the next year.
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Leave a bunch of words behind, it helps build character/s !