Monthly Archives: October 2011

Chicken Vindaloo

I’ve been following and reading Prerna’s blog “Indian Simmer” for a while. She cooks traditional Indian dishes and takes the most beautiful and artistic pictures of food. After reading about her kitchen and seeing her gorgeous photography for months, I finally got around to making one of her recipes. And oh man, is it good.

Perfectly spiced . . . perfect consistency and texture . . . perfect tenderness of the chicken . . . ‘perfect’ is the operating word here, in case you hadn’t noticed.

And once ‘perfect’ has been thrown out there, well . . . I don’t really have anything left to say.

Ingredients

(Serves 5)

4 red chilies
6 cloves garlic
1 TBS grated fresh ginger
¼ cup white wine vinegar
1 ½ lbs chicken thighs
1 tsp cloves
1 TBS cumin
½ tsp cardamom seeds
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp turmeric
½ TBS whole peppercorns
4 TBS vegetable oil
1 ½ tsp mustard seeds
1 large onion
2 tsp salt
Cilantro, to garnish

De-seed and mince the red chilies.

I was wary of the heat, so I only used 2. BUT! I totally should have used 4. The heat (for me) was barely noticeable with 2.

Mince the garlic . . .

. . . and grate the ginger. After shouldering tons of guilt for letting my ginger shrivel in the fridge due to un-prompt usage, I finally followed someone’s advice and froze it. I keep frozen lumps of ginger, and when I’m ready to use them, I grate them with my microplane zester.

Works like a charm! Seriously. You’d think that grating frozen ginger would be tough–but it practically grates itself as I watch in wonder.

Soak the chilies, ginger, and garlic in the vinegar for half an hour.

Grind them or process them to make a paste.

My mortar and pestle experience wasn’t exactly ideal, since the liquidiness and the bashing together made for a very splashy time. So I recommend using a little food processor. However, the dish didn’t seem to suffer because the garlic and chili were in chunks.

At this point, I happily poured the mixture on the chicken thighs for the hour of marination to begin.

Then I remembered that I was supposed to chop up the chicken.

Whoops.

No harm done, ultimately. Unless you consider the additional pictures of raw chicken harmful.

My thumb. It looks gross. The chicken renders it totally unphotogenic, man.

Anyway, marinate the chicken in the chili paste for 1 hour in the refrigerator.

Grind the cloves, cumin, cardamom seeds, cinnamon, turmeric, and peppercorns in a spice or coffee grinder.

The smells are heavenly, people. This alone is a reason to make Indian food: to experience a world of scented spices.

Once everything is nicely ground up, mix in the salt.

Dice up the onion. I love dicing onions.

I hope you do too, because I certainly do a lot of that on this here blog.

Heat the oil over medium high heat in a large pot or Dutch oven. Add the mustard seeds . . .

. . . and when they start to pop, add the diced onion.

Note: the smell of mustard seeds heating is simply wonderful. And totally not what you’re thinking it might be if you’ve never smelled it before.

Cook the onion for 6-8 minutes, until the onion is softened and starting to brown. Add the marinated chicken with any accumulated juices to the pot, and stir fry for 4-5 minutes.

Add the dry spice mix . . .

. . . and stir it around until the chicken is evenly coated.

Cover the pot, turn the heat down to low, and cook for 30 minutes, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pot about every 7 minutes to avoid burning the sauce.

You may be thinking to yourself: but wait! There’s practically no sauce involved! Where is this ‘curry sauce’ that’s supposed to happen?

Well, the liquid released from the chicken and onion and such will somehow magically make things work. Just believe me. And believe Prerna. She’s an expert.

See?

During this half an hour, the chicken will cook through and the curry sauce will thicken. Use this time to wash and chop up the cilantro:

Once the timer dings, make sure the chicken is cooked, and stir in a nice handful of chopped cilantro.

Serve over rice!

It’s so good. I never would have guessed that such a great sauce could happen with vinegar and some spices.

It’s so good that I kept uncontrollably snapping almost identical pictures.

It may be slightly swamp colored, but once you eat it, you will understand that true beauty lies within.

Seriously. Take a bite!

Guys. Oh guys. Make it.

Click here for printer-friendly version: Chicken Vindaloo

Fashion vs. Trucking: behind the scenes of a marriage

When I started dating my husband, we were both 18. Babes at sea, I think now. One of the things that I loved about him was that he didn’t have an especially boy-centric taste in movies or books or music. He wasn’t a fan of shoot-’em-up flicks, and didn’t rush out to see the newest Sylvester Stallone movie (insert affectionate nudge nudge to a certain You-Know-Who)

(and I don’t mean Voldemort).

Instead, my then-boyfriend enjoyed his share of quirky movies like The Royal Tenenbaums, or chick flicks like Love, Actually or even Sense and Sensibility. Wait–did I take a vow of silence on that one? I can’t quite remember . . . oh well, too late.

The point is that for a long time, I thought that in the realm of entertainment-centered marital conflicts, I had gotten off scot-free. I heard other women talk about little spats with their spouses involving what to watch on TV, or what movie to pop in on a Friday night, and I chuckled to myself inside, feeling smug and superior.

Oh, does pride ever come before the fall.

Because then, 10 years into our relationship, while in Alaska, the show Ice Road Truckers entered his life.

The 3rd season of this show centers around the runs that drivers working for Carlile Trucking make from Fairbanks to DeadHorse, over a road literally made of ice.

Look! We spotted a Carlile truck just south of Fairbanks!

Anyway, there we were in Alaska, and my husband’s excitement about this show was gushing forth. We watched a couple episodes, I learned some interesting things, and that was that. I wasn’t a huge fan. But the next evening:

“Let’s watch another episode of Ice Road Truckers!” he exclaimed enthusiastically.

“But . . . I don’t even like that show! What about Design Star?”

“But what about Ice Road Truckers?”

“What about Project Runway? You like Tim Gunn, don’t you?”

“But the Polar Bear is about to make his first run to DeadHorse! And Jack is in the middle of a snowstorm with an oversize load!”

“But it’s just dudes in a truck, over and over again!”

Oh my word. I was in the middle of a little entertainment friction. And I couldn’t believe my own ears.

So let it be known: if you’re just beginning your relationship with a man-type person and you think he’s just into quirky indie films and chick flicks like you, beware. One day he’ll decide that he only wants to watch Ice Road Truckers. And Ice Road Truckers alone will he watch. And watch he will only Ice Road Truckers. And you’ll have to have a small show-down about whether you’re watching Ice Road Truckers or Project Runway. And you will savor a nice piece of a dessert called ‘Humble Pie.’

“But honey,” I tried to reason, “all the episodes are the same! It’s just a bunch of people driving!  And they just create all this drama from silly stuff–like that time that Lisa just slips on the ice but they make you think she’s dead or something just to hype things up before the commercial break! The drama is totally made up!”

And then I rememebr the silly drama on this season of Project Runway between Bert and everyone else . . . and I can’t really continue to debate the thing along those lines. I try to think up a different tactic. And then I remember that I married a man.

And I’m a woman.

And dude . . . we’re different. But that’s okay.

“I’ll watch Ice Road Truckers,” I’ll finally consent, “but I need to pop some popcorn, lie on your lap, and you need to give me an avalanche of back skritchies to get me through it!”

And then we’re both happy. I guess I’ll do anything for some good back-skritchy laden snuggling.

Plus, he’s kinda cute . . .

. . . I think I’ll keep him.