Chicken Curry

We are big fans of curry. So many wonderful flavors and aromas in a bottle of curry powder! We have posted a number of curry-using recipes here - Turkey Curry, Thai Fried Rice, Vegetarian Curried Split Pea Soup, Curried Chicken Salad. Well, here's another one. The addition of tomato makes this one different. The tomato mellows out the curry. It's really a delicious combination and not uncommon, if you look in Indian cookbooks. It bears absolutely no resemblance to the chicken curry that you often see on menus in Chinese restaurants. This is much, much better.

Chicken Curry
(serves 4-6, costs $9.20)

3 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 ½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts or chicken thighs
1 large clove of garlic, minced
1 medium onion, sliced
2 sweet bell peppers (same color, different colors - use what you like), seeded and sliced
1 Tablespoon curry powder
1 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes, undrained (see Note)
3 Tablespoons milk or heavy cream
¾ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
juice of ½ lemon

Heat 2 Tablespoons vegetable oil in a skillet with a cover over medium-high heat. Brown chicken on both sides, about 5 minutes per side. Remove from the pan. The chicken won't be completely done; it will finish cooking in the sauce. Cut the chicken into 1" cubes and place it and any juices in a bowl. Set aside.

Add the remaining 1 Tablespoon oil to the skillet. Add the garlic, onion, bell peppers, and curry powder. Stir to combine and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes until the onions and peppers are just starting to soften. Add the reserved chicken and its juices, tomatoes, milk, salt, and pepper. Stir and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook until the chicken is completely cooked, about 15 minutes. If all the liquid cooks off, add ¼ cup of water. Stir in lemon juice and add additional salt, if needed.

Note: 14.5 oz. seems to be the current standard for cans of diced tomatoes. If you can't find that size, anything from 14 to 16 oz. is just fine. I have lots of old recipes that call for 16 oz. cans so apparently cans have been shrinking over the last 30 years.

Shopping Smart: Pay attention to unit prices!

Today, I was at the supermarket for tomato sauce. An 8 ounce can of tomato sauce cost 38¢. A 15 ounce can, on sale!, cost 89¢. The unit price on the 8 oz. can is 4.75¢ per oz. while the unit price on the 15 oz. can is 5.93¢ per oz. Wait a second! That doesn't sound right. But, things are often priced this way. A lot of people assume that the bigger the package, the cheaper the unit cost. It's not always so. I've seen this a lot on boxes of cereal too, a food where the difference can be as much as a dime an ounce. Buying in bulk may not be your best deal.

So, pay attention to the unit cost to get the best deal. Supermarkets post the unit prices so smart shoppers can "easily" comparison shop. I can't tell you this is always easy. Supermarkets have a way of displaying the unit price in different units, making it much harder to figure out the best deal. The same food with unit prices in ounces and in pounds can give you a computational headache. But, most of the time, the units are consistent and you can get the best deal by using this information.

Meatless Monday - Black-eyed Peas and ?

This is a riff on Hoppin' John, the New Year's Day tradition of serving black-eyed peas with rice. You could serve these with rice. Or pasta, or potatoes, or...up to you. Pasta is the quickest. I like it on rotini, corkscrew pasta.

As discussed in our Cajun Meatloaf, this is Louisiana Style because of the combination of celery, onion, green pepper, and garlic. The first three are called the Holy Trinity and garlic is the Pope, down in Cajun country. No wonder I love the food down there!

You can use a can of cooked black-eyed peas. They are OK. I like to cook them myself and unlike many other beans, they don't require soaking, and cook in under an hour. About 45 minutes, in fact. Instructions on cooking the beans are at the end of recipe.

Though obviously not meatless, this is also a great place to use up a little bit of cooked ham, sausage, or chicken. About ¼ - ½ cup is good. Add it along with the black-eyed peas.

Louisiana Style Black-Eyed Peas
(serves 3, costs $3.10 with canned black-eyed peas)

1 15 oz. can black-eyed peas, drained (use 1 ¾ cups if you cook them yourself)
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
½ onion, chopped, about ¾ cup
½ large green pepper, seeded and chopped, about ¾ cup
2 stalks celery, chopped, about ¾ cup
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ to ¾ teaspoon salt, depending on saltiness of black-eyed peas
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 bay leaf
2-3 Tablespoons of white wine, broth or water
½ to 1 teaspoon hot sauce (such as Tabasco)

3 servings pasta (6 oz. dry), cooked or 3 cups cooked rice
grated Parmesan cheese (optional)
additional hot sauce

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion, green pepper, celery, and garlic. Cook for 5 minutes until onion is translucent. Add black-eyed peas, salt, pepper, the bay leaf, and a few Tablespoons of liquid. Cover, reduce heat to low and cook until black-eyed peas are hot. Remove from the heat, add hot sauce, stir, and remove the bay leaf. Serve over hot pasta or hot rice.

To cook 1 pound of dry black-eyed peas, rinse off the peas, removing any non-pea debris. Bring 4 cups of liquid (stock or water) to a boil in a 2-3 quart saucepan. Add the black-eyed peas and reduce the heat to maintain a simmer - gentle bubbling. Cook for 35-45 minutes until peas are tender. Try a few beans to make sure they are all done. If any are crunchy, cook for another 5 minutes. Drain before using. Since you won't need all the beans for this recipe, refrigerate the reminder, or freeze them. They freeze extremely well.

Honey Glazed Carrots

Carrots are one of the easiest vegetables to prepare. They are very tolerant of overcooking. Or undercooking - we eat lots of raw carrots in my house. You need to figure out how cooked you like your carrots - very crunchy, a little crunchy, tender, or even soft. All these points on the carrot cooking continuum are just fine.

Carrots are also cheap year round, making them an excellent go-to vegetable. They are pleasantly sweet, all by themselves, which makes them palatable to lots of folks. They aren't as challenging as, say, collard greens or even broccoli. But, still very nutritious.

This is a simplification of a classic French dish, carrots glazed with butter and sugar. Though butter is more expensive, it is mighty tasty. We use honey here, but you could substitute an equal amount of agave nectar. Even maple syrup, though that is pretty decadent. :-)

This isn't terribly sweet. There is just enough sugar to enhance the natural sweetness of the carrots. Really - this isn't dessert, it's a vegetable!

Honey Glazed Carrots
(serves 4-6, costs $1.00 made with butter, 85¢ if made with oil)

1 pound of carrots, sliced thinly or julienned or cut into sticks (see Note)
1 ½ Tablespoons butter or vegetable oil
1 ½ Tablespoons honey
about ½ teaspoon salt
chopped parsley (optional)

Fill a medium saucepan half full with water. Bring to a boil and add the carrots. Cook until they are done to your liking. For tender carrots, it takes 8-12 minutes depending on how thick they are sliced. Julienned carrots will take under 5 minutes. Drain the carrots and return to the saucepan over low heat. Add the butter, honey and salt. Toss to coat. The carrots are ready when the butter has all melted and carrots are all coated. Add chopped parsley for color, if you like.

Flat side down, to keep the carrot from rolling around

Note: Slicing or julienning carrots is great knife skills practice. If the carrot rolls around when you try to cut it, slice off a thin slice from one side of the carrot. That will prevent the carrot from rolling around as much. Julienning - cutting something into skinny sticks - is done by slicing the carrot the long way, stacking up the slices, and cutting the slices into thin sticks. It's easier to do if you cut the slices into 3-4" lengths before cutting into sticks.

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Meatless Monday - Microwave Spinach Lasagna

We are not vegetarians but we are all for eating more delicious vegetarian food. It's a great way to eat well for less since meat is a fairly expensive way to get your protein.

This is a recipe for microwave spinach lasagne that I have been making for many years. It has a lot of ingredients, all easy to get, and the dish comes together easily. The toughest part is the assembly. You can do this. A tip on the noodles, after cooking and draining them, lay them out flat in one layer. Then they won't stick together, making assembly easier.

This is a great one-dish meal, good enough for company but so easy to make.

Microwave Spinach Lasagna
(serves 6, costs $11.00)

6 lasagne noodles, cooked according to package directions and drained
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil + some more to oil dish
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
¾ cup water
1 Tablespoon vegetable stock concentrate or dry vegetable soup mix
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon dried basil
½ teaspoon dried oregano
¼ teaspoon black pepper
a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
12 ounces frozen spinach
2 cups low-fat cottage cheese, a 16 ounce container
2 eggs
12 ounces shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese (3 cups)
⅓ cup Parmesan cheese, about 1 ounce

Thaw spinach by microwaving for 3 minutes in a 1 ½ quart microwaveable bowl or dish. Put spinach in a colander to cool while you cook the sauce.

Combine oil, onion, and garlic in the same dish you cooked the spinach in. Microwave for 3 minutes, stirring once. Stir in tomato sauce, tomato paste, water, vegetable stock concentrate, sugar, basil, oregano, black pepper, and crushed red pepper flakes. Cover with lid or plastic wrap and microwave for 4 minutes. Stir and microwave for 4 more minutes. Stir again and set aside.

Squeeze most of the liquid out of the cooked spinach and coarsely chop. Put in a medium bowl. Add cottage cheese and eggs. Stir to combine.

Spray a 12"x8" microwaveable glass dish (this size will fit in most microwave ovens) with nonstick cooking spray or lightly oil to prevent sticking. To assemble, lay 3 noodles in dish  Ladle on ½ of the sauce, all the spinach mixture, then sprinkle on 2 cups of mozzarella cheese. Put on remaining 3 noodles, and the rest of the sauce. Cover tightly with plastic wrap.

Microwave on high for 5 minutes. Then microwave at 70% for another 12 minutes. Remove the plastic wrap and sprinkle with remaining mozzarella cheese and Parmesan cheese. Microwave on high, uncovered, for 3 minutes until cheese is melted. Let stand for at least 5 minutes before serving.

Adapted from Microwave Cooking Lite, Contemporary, 1985. I've changed the cooking times a lot because microwave ovens in 2013 are a lot more powerful than microwave ovens in 1985.