Traditional Chicken Curry

The last semester was really hectic for me with teaching for the first time and applying for dissertation fellowships and this blog has clearly reflected that, in that I didn't have any time to update. But this upcoming semester should be a lot calmer, so I'm going to try to be a little more consistent with updating and plan to do so about twice a month, around the 1st and the 15th of every month. This gives me a little more leeway than trying to update every other weekend.

So I made this Traditional Chicken Curry from the Indian Slow Cooker cookbook over a year ago (on 28 September 2011), but I can't update with anything I've made more recently because I can't seem to find the charger for my digital camera and all the photos that I have on there are stuck there for now. I'll keep looking... I'm sure I put it somewhere after my France trip and I'm pretty sure that I didn't leave it in Paris... (For my vegetarian friends, I just noticed that the same author now has a Vegan Indian Cooking cookbook, that apparently has both slow cooker and stove-top recipes.)

This is a pretty simple recipe, but you need a food processor for it. I was able to use the "food processor"-type attachment for my immersion blender which was effective, but it's not great for these things, especially because of the size. My parents got me an 11-cup food processor for Christmas, so from now on I'll be able to use that for these types of things. So first, you mix onion, tomato, ginger root, and garlic in the food processor until it comes out smooth. Now, I didn't have the exact amount of ginger for this that the recipe called for, so I added some dried ginger as well, approximately according to this substitution policy. Would it have tasted different if I had used all fresh ginger? Perhaps, but this recipe worked with a mix of fresh and dried.

After you have a paste, you add salt (though, knowing me, I probably left out the salt), turmeric, garam masla, vegetable or canola oil, plain yogurt, red chile powder, and dried methi leaves. I got the methi leaves from Amazon.com (this is the kind I purchased, but I would have gotten ones that were Prime eligible, so I didn't get these exact ones).

This paste gets poured over chicken in the slow cooker. Now, the recipe calls for "3 pounds (1.36 kg) skinless whole chicken, cut in about 8 pieces including the breast, legs, and wings (boneless can also be used)." As people who have followed this blog can guess, I used boneless, skinless chicken breasts.

To this, you add a cinnamon stick, green cardamom pods, whole cloves, and halved green chiles. I also got the cardamom pods from Amazon.com. Then you cook it on low for 8 hours.

This is what it looked like before I turned it on.

And this is what it looked like after cooking for 8 hours.

An optional step is to add 1/2 cup boiling water toward the end of the cooking time if you like your dish with more broth.  I did not do this. The recipe suggests serving this "over a bed of basmati or brown rice or with roti or naan." As you can see from the pictures, I served it over basmati rice with a salad.

Now, since this was so long ago, I don't remember how many servings I got out of this, but the cookbook says you get 6-8 servings. I imagine that a lot of this depends on how many pieces of chicken you end up with. In terms of calories, this is a pretty substantial meal, especially if you only end up with 6 servings. Not counting the rice, I calculated that this is about 380 calories for 8 servings and 510 for 6. With the rice, that ends up around 530 to 660 for the meal, not counting the salad which, with dressing, can bring your total up to over 700 or 800 calories -- a full mean for someone my size and even substantial enough for my husband (though I'm sure he went back for seconds).

Cost-wise, this is still under $10/serving if you have to buy everything. I calculated based on my purchases around $5.81/serving for 8 servings and $7.74/serving for 6. I had to get most of the ingredients for this recipe, though I already had turmeric and garam masala from the Spiced Cauliflower and Potatoes I had made over the summer (and the vegetable oil, of course). So I spent around $4.64/serving for 8 servings and $6.19/serving for 6. You could eat this meal for 3-4 days of a week and have spent under $50 total for your dinners for that week. Pretty good for those of us still on a graduate student's budget.

Dum Phukt-Style Potatoes with Cauliflower

My husband doesn't like cauliflower. He always eats it when I cook with it or put it on our salad, but he doesn't like cauliflower. So, during spring break while he was away camping (and I was still here working on my dissertation prospectus), I made this Dum Phukt-Style Potatoes with Cauliflower from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker cookbook for myself.

Now, the directions say to "peel and cut potatoes in half lengthwise, then cut each half into 4 wedges," like in this picture, but I found this to be a little too long so after the first batch I ended up cutting each wedge in half. Since I was planning to serve it over rice, I wanted smaller pieces.

So, you brown the potatoes a bit in a skillet with olive oil then add them to the crock pot. Then you do the same with the cauliflower.

After that, you add the onions and let them cook, adding minced ginger root, minced garlic, salt (which I didn't use), pepper, a cinnamon stick, some whole cloves, and a couple bay leaves once the onions are soft. Then you also add half a cup of water.

You put everything in the crock pot and stir carefully to combine everything. Although the Vegetarian Slow Cooker cookbook normally tells you that you can do some of the steps ahead of time and refrigerate whatever you've made until you're ready to cook, this one does not have that suggestion.  I guess they don't recommend making anything ahead of time, though obviously you could cut everything the night before so you just have to do the cooking in the morning.

Interestingly, this recipe cooks with a large piece of parchment paper over the mixture to catch the moisture (see image below too). It cooks like this on low for 8 hours or high for 4 hours, basically until the potatoes are cooked through.

This is what the parchment paper looks like after cooking.

Now, while the potatoes, cauliflower, and onions are cooking in the crock pot, you make the yogurt sauce, combining yogurt (this recipe said full-fat, but I used non-fat anyway), curry powder, and "long red chile peppers, seeded and diced." I had trouble finding red chile peppers in my grocery store, but a quick google search (thank God for smart phones) told me that I can substitute jalapenos or serrano peppers for the red chiles. I went for the serrano peppers which made the meal really spicy (yum)!

This is what the combined yogurt sauce looks like.

Once the potato-cauliflower-onion mix is done cooking, you carefully remove the parchment paper so the water doesn't get into the mix. You take out the whole spices (cinnamon, cloves, and bay leaves -- though I couldn't find all the cloves so I just left them in there and discovered them as I ate it), then you add the yogurt mix and stir everything together carefully and cook it all on high for 10 more minutes.

This is what it looks like when everything is done.

Now as I mentioned above, I served this over rice and it was AMAZING.  I really liked it and when my husband got back I fed it to him without pointing out the cauliflower and he even liked it! Now the recipe says that it makes 4 to 6 servings and I remember this not lasting as long as I had thought it would, but I don't remember exactly how many servings I got out of it. So, calorie-wise (without the rice) it'd be about 262 calories per serving for 4 servings and 174 calories for 6 servings (with the rice, that'd be about 411 and 324 -- a totally reasonable meal for someone like me if you add a salad). In terms of cost, it's a little bit pricey per serving. It's still under $10 per serving, but if you have to buy everything it would be $8.83 per serving for 4 servings and $5.89 per serving for 6 servings not counting the rice. Of course rice isn't all that pricey so it would only be $9.17 and $6.12, respectively. Of course, I picked this recipe because we had received a cauliflower in our produce delivery and I already had most of the other items (I had run out of onions and potatoes though, and didn't already have a couple of the spices), so for me it was $3.45 per serving for 4 servings and $2.30 per serving for 6 servings. Even though I don't remember how many servings I got, either one of those is totally reasonable for several dinners and/or lunches without using up too much student loan money.

Rachel Ray's Indian-Style Crock Pot Curry

When my husband and I first moved into our new apartment, there was a period in which we had a million boxes and my cookbooks were all buried somewhere so I ended up searching the internet for some good crock pot recipes.  (In fact, if you skip down to the last photo, you can see some of the unpacked boxes on the floor behind my husband.)  On June 23 I tried making a recipe I found online: Rachel Ray's Indian-Style Curry.  I picked this recipe because my husband absolutely loves Indian food, having grown up with close family friends who are Indian. Interestingly, this recipe is different than many of the other ones I've made, and in a really brilliant way that just, silly enough, never occurred to me.  Most of the recipes I make have you put most of the ingredients in the crock pot, then mix the sauce in a separate bowl and pour it over everything else.  What is cool about this is it really was one-pot cooking.  It has you make the sauce first in the crock pot, then add the other ingredients and stir everything together.

As you can read from the link above, the sauce is made out of coconut milk, tomato paste, curry, coriander, cumin, and hot sauce.  Then you add all the other ingredients and mix it together: onion, garlic, ginger, bell pepper, eggplant, sweet potatoes, chick peas, chicken, salt, and black pepper.  Now I skipped the salt, as I often do.  Also, although this recipe called for bone-in, skinless chicken thighs, I substituted boneless, skinless chicken thighs -- of course I find that my favorite cut of chicken is the boneless, skinless chicken breast so these days whenever I have a chicken recipe I tend to use that regardless of what it actually calls for (especially when they are on sale at the grocery store!).  Then you cook on high for four hours.

This is what it looked like before turning it on.

And this is what it looked like when finished cooking.

Now, the recipe as listed on the Rachel Ray website suggests that you serve it over white rice and garnish it with lemon wedges, scallions, cilantro, peanuts, and mango chutney.  I decided to serve it over rice, but skipped the ridiculous amount of garnish completely.  Looking back over my receipt (that I dug up out of a pile of old receipts to figure out how much I spent on this meal), I did purchase everything for the garnish at Trader Joe's but I think I forgot about it when it actually came time to serve the recipe -- which would make sense because I wouldn't have looked up the recipe online again before serving four hours later.  Overall, both my husband and I thought this was a good recipe, but it is a very mild curry and doesn't feel very Indian -- more like an American take on Indian food.  Of course, if you wanted to make it more spicy, you could use more hot sauce or throw in some crushed red pepper.  But still, it was yummy.

Now, at this point, this was so long ago that I can't even pretend to remember how many servings we got out of it so I'll use Rachel Ray's estimate of four servings even though I'm pretty sure we got more than four servings out of this.  Of course, I also used the whole eggplant instead of just half as she recommends... cause what would I do with half an eggplant?  In terms of calories, this one is pretty heavy, especially if you include the rice.  The curry itself is about 587 calories per serving, if you're counting for four servings.  Then, add about 140 calories to each serving for the rice, making this meal almost 730 calories per serving without adding a salad or a beverage.  However, since I suspect that I actually got more than four servings out of this, I will note that this recipe is only 392 calories per serving for six servings (so even with the rice, only about 532 calories per serving -- much more reasonable for someone who tends to be sitting at a desk all day).

In terms of cost, this was actually a bit pricey for me to make, but part of that was because we had just moved into our new place and so didn't have any spices and such yet and I had to purchase all of them.  The one thing we already had on hand was the hot sauce because my husband is addicted to Tapatio.  Using 4 servings, this comes out to $8.39 per serving (not counting the garnish) if you have to purchase everything (though if you make it into 6 servings, it's around $5.59 per serving).  However, if you cook regularly and already have the spices on hand, it's a much more reasonable $5.17 per serving.  Still -- 4 meals for the week at under $10 per meal?  Not too bad for those of us on a limited budget.

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Finally, I apologize for having been a week late with this post.  Somehow, I planned to be updating my blog the same weekends that I've scheduled to submit drafts of my dissertation prospectus to my seminar.  So, it's quite possible that some weeks until I get this done will be a little late.  But such is the life of the grad student.