Day 10: Chicken Curry with Gentle Spices, Thai Cantaloupe Salad with Chile, Sally's Coconut Macaroons (chocolate variation)

These recipes have the longest names, I feel like I am writing a novel just putting the title up!

Chicken Curry with Gentle Spices
Crossover Spice Blend
Thai Cantaloupe Salad with Chile
Sally's Coconut Macaroons (Chocolate Variation)

OK, despite the long-winded, overly descriptive names, these were all supercalifragilisticexpialidocious delicious. The chicken curry is very easy to make and one of the least expensive recipes in the whole book, I think. The idea is to blend up your own curry paste out of fresh ginger, garlic, onion, tomatoes, chiles, and spices. This is not like the bright red mystery curry paste from the grocery store. They recommend their own Crossover Spice Blend as the base, but once I made it, it justed tasted like a simple garam masala, a spice easily obtainable from any asian or middle eastern market. I ended up adding some of my favorite garam masala my sister brought me from Dubai. Then the curry had a lot more punch.

This curry is a yogurt base and you have to cook with whole fat plain yogurt, no trying to go low fat here or it won't work. First, you cook the curry spice blend in oil with onion and then cook it and cook it and cook it until the oil separates from the curry. Now they tell you not to hurry past this step and that it should take about 10 minutes to "break" the sauce. I had to cook it for nearly 15 minutes before it looked like the oil was pooling out separately. And I never was really sure I got it right, a photo in the cookbook might have been helpful in explaining what you are supposed to look for.

This cookbook is short on photos of the actual process and sometimes you need that if you have never made what they are describing. Next, you add about half the yogurt and again, you have to cook it and cook it and cook it until the yogurt nearly cooks away and becomes very thick. Finally, you add the chopped, boneless (organic-preferred of course) chicken thighs and the remaining yogurt and simmer until the chicken is cooked. Then you spoon out the chicken and keep cooking the sauce until the oil separates once again. Pour the sauce over the chicken, garnish with cilantro, and poof! Perfect, delicious, not too spicy curry. This was a crowd pleaser and I want to try it with pork or white fish. Tofu would probably be good too.

I served simple brown rice on the side (cooked the Splendid Table--boiling like pasta---way) along with zucchini quick sauted in chiles and oil.

The curry was pretty high maintenance, easy to make, but you had to stir it the whole time. So when it came to the Cantaloupe salad, I ignored the recommendation of making it right before you served it. Instead, I made it before I started the curry and chilled it in the fridge until we were ready to eat. I tossed it again to re-coat the fruit and I thought it tasted great. It's very simple: cubed cantaloupe, thin sliced basil, fresh chile or jalapeno, lime juice, sugar, fish sauce (key, don't skip this!), and a pinch of sugar, salt, and pepper. Very colorful and exotic looking and the coolness of the cantaloupe was a nice balance to the curry.

For dessert I made Sally's Coconut Macaroons but one of the variations, adding chocolate chips to the batter. Again, these cooked far faster in my oven, 10-12 minutes faster than what the recipe calls for. These were even better than the plain batch I made last week. The chocolate barely melted and wasn't messy like I thought it would be and we ate nearly all of them. It was so easy to just grab another one. These are super easy to make and would be great to take to a party.

Luckily our friend Karen was there to help us eat all of this good, good food.

19 recipes down in How To Eat Supper.