Some kind of curry thing...

What I failed to mention in my previous post is that I have a goal. I've been thinking I've been getting rust in my cooking skills. So I'm cooking with a different specific ingredient each week, just to get more familiar with it. So this week's ingredient is curry paste, which is where the whole chicken satay thing came from.

Today I decided to play with rice. This was a pretty basic recipe, based on a pretty basic pilaf. I started with a cup of rice, browned in a wee bit of oil, just enough to coat (maybe a teaspoon or so). I added 2 cups of chicken broth, 1/3 cup of dark raisins, 1/3 cup of golden raisins, and a Tablespoon of curry paste (no wussy mild rice for me). The nice thing about using chicken broth is that commercial broths (including the low sodium variety) have plenty of salt to go around, so you don't need to worry about salting otherwise. I brought it to a boil, gave it a quick stir just for good measure, covered it, and dropped the heat to low. I gave it 20 minutes on low, turned off the heat, let it rest another 10 minutes (without uncovering), and stirred in 1/4 cup of toasted almond slices. So tasty!

Just for jayce^

So jayce^ finally convinced me this morning to start blogging some of my recipes as I make them. I don't know who could possibly be interested, but here goes.

A couple of nights ago, I decided to try making my own chicken satay. I'm sure most people would have looked at a recipe or something, but I decided to just go from memory, based on the last chicken satay that I had. I started with a wee little can of coconut milk (5.6oz). I whisked in maybe a couple of tablespoons of curry paste and maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup of natural peanut butter. I poured all that into a food saver bag, along with a couple of chicken breasts, tossed to coat, sealed it up and put it in the bottom of the fridge for about a day. The next day, I soaked some skewers in water for a bit, and sliced the chicken into strips. I tossed the chicken in the marinade again, and skewered it. Then I put them all on a foil-lined baking sheet, brushed the remaining marinade over the top, and baked for about 10 minutes at 350F.

They were pretty tasty, and just the right about of spicy for my wife and me. In retrospect, I think if I were to make then again, I would probably add maybe half a lemon worth of juice and maybe a teaspoon or two of kosher salt to the marinade. The curry paste and the peanut butter had a little bit of salt, but it was still a little underseasoned. But all in all, it was a pretty tasty dish.