Chicken curry

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Now with an update on the naan bread!

Another recipe was tried the next day, and the bread was baked on a hot baking stone. The results looked like this:

Naan bread with ghee, parsley and garlic

This I was very happy with. Bubbling up in the right places as well as thin and crusty. Yum yum.


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Today I jump into one of my weak spots. The curry. I find it very difficult to get a good curry taste in my curry dishes, whether it's an Indian chicken curry, or the danish style dish "Boller i karry" - Meatballs in curry sauce. I have tried every trick in the book, bought the most expensive curry, used cream to round off the taste, burned the curry powder, but it seems no matter what I do, the dish just tastes spicy but not flavorish. I suspect that what I need to do is to use a smaller amount of good curry powder and then add a flavor enhancer during cooking. I think I will try that next time.

For today's meal, I made a chicken curry with a lot of different spices but no special vegetables or anything. So straight up meat and taste. As a side dish I made jasmine rice, which for the first time in my life, I burned at the bottom - very embarrassing.

As a special side dish, I tried to cook naan bread. My first time ever with this, and unfortunately it was not that successful. Maybe it is just not possible without a tandoori oven. I thought that maybe it would be okay, since my boyfriend and I have invested in a baking stone made of lava, initially bought for pizza making - someday I will post some of my boyfriend's master pieces - pizza we can do :D. Since the naan bread did not turn out perfect, I will try another recipe again tomorrow, and make sure that the baking stone is fully heated - I think this might be the reason together with a bad recipe for the naan disaster of today.

Finally, I would have made some mint yogurt, but my mint was sad and not up for it - I grow it myself. The only thing I have kept alive for several months though. With no mint, and nothing else in the fridge, I tried to combine some different spices with the skyr (youghurt). This turned out good.

I marinated the chicken in some spices and yogurt for 30 minutes

Ghee made by melting butter and removing the "fatty" stuff

Ingredients for the dressing

Ingredients for the chicken curry

The rather unsuccessful naan bread. Although it looks good.

The final result

Short notes on the meal:
The curry was strong, but not very flavorful. This I unfortunately expected. The rice was too sticky - this I will make up for another time, as rice are not difficult to make. The Naan looked nice, but it did not "pop". No air bubbles inside, just heavy bread. The dressing was good, and delivered a nice kick to the meal.

RECIPE
Dressing:
1 dL skyr
1 tbsp of honey
½ a lime
Turmeric
Cayenne pepper
Ginger powder
Cumin
Coriander powder
Cider vinegar

Mix all ingredients together and taste. It can be quite bitter like when tasted alone, but then try to put on some bread or something.

Curry:
1 onion
1 tomato
1 clove of garlic
1 chili
Turmeric
Coriander powder
Cumin
Cinnamon
Ginger powder
Curry powder
2 dL milk
2 tbsp olive oil
Cashew nuts
900 g chicken (inner fillets or breast)
25 g butter
1 apple
Salt
Pepper
1 dL cream

Chop onions, tomatoes, chili and garlic. Grate the apple. Burn a couple of tablespoons of curry in some oil and butter. Add the chili and garlic and cook for a short while. Add the chopped onions and the grated apple (the apples gives some starch to help thicken the sauce). Add the chicken inner fillets to the mix. Add tomatoes. When cooked through, add the seasonings and milk. When the curry has simmered for around 10 minutes, adjust the sauce thickness by some Maizena or milk and flour. Finally add the cream together with cashew nuts. The cream should not could for long. Preferably the cream should not boil.

Cook rice as prescribed on the pack.

I will not list the recipe for the naan bread, since they were not successful. If I am to succeed tomorrow, I will update the post.

Serve the rice with curry, naan bread and dressing.

Rosemary chicken

For this meal, I decided on making a perfect chicken in oven. The meal includes parted chicken with bone, a ginger dressing and a nectarine salad. I have had my issues with the chicken in oven style meals. It is a dead sin if the skin is not crisp, and the meat must not be dry, so I had my doubts when I started out. I have seen a lot of cooking programs on tv, and many times they stuff some flavored butter underneath the skin, and it always turns out great, so this was my plan, though upfront I could not imagine that you could just lift off the skin. This just illustrates how little experimental I have been in a kitchen. It turned out to be very easy.

In the fridge I had some leftover ginger, and some leftover skyr and creme fraiche from the shrimp taco meal, so I came up with the idea of making a ginger dressing - maybe it would work with chicken, maybe it would not.

For a side dish, I wanted to make a salad, but not a regular salad consisting of iceberg, tomato, cucumber and maybe some feta cheese, if I really wanted to show off. Okay, so I had these nectarines and thought why not make a salad with it - this I definitely had  not made before. But then.... I also thought, why not combine it with some grilled squash and goat cheese. Here I have to say, when tasting the salad, I firstly did not like the combination at all, then I was like - hmm, maybe this is okay, it tastes strange, but maybe that is good, and then finally, I was like - no, this is not a perfect combination. Actually I would not recommend it, although the colors are nice :) I would though recommend a salad based on nectarine, but leave out the squash, and tone down the cheese (goat was way to strong in flavor). Maybe a really tasty buffalo mozzarella would work. It is more discrete in flavor, and if you do not like the combination, eat the mozzarella by itself - I love buffalo mozzarella - yummy.

Dressing: Skyr, creme fraiche, lime, ginger, garlic

Butter stuff for the chicken: salted butter, lime zest, rosemary

The chicken before cooking. The butter is spread out between skin and meat

Salad: Nectarine, baby leafs, squash, goat cheese - do not go there, use only the nectarine and salad

The final result

The chicken was cooked for 40 minutes on regular oven (200 degrees C) and 5 minutes on grill. Meanwhile I made the salad. The dressing, I prepared first, so it could get tasty in the fridge for an hour or so. To my great joy, the chicken was perfect. My first bite was very hot and very juicy and luckily the skin was crispy - although there was not enough of it. I love skin, when crispy, otherwise, I take it off.

So I already stated the the combination of salad ingredients did not work well, but a combination that did work well was the ginger dressing with the hot, crispy chicken. This was good, and since I am still home alone, there is enough for lunch tomorrow. A good day for the kitchen, I would say.

RECIPE
Dressing:
A scoop of creme fraiche
A scoop of skyr
1 clove of garlic - pressed
2 cubic cm of ginger - grated
1/2 lime

Grate the ginger and get everything into the dressing base (skyr and creme fraiche). Mix with a clove of garlic and juice from half a lime.

Salad:
2 nectarines
1/2 squash
4 cm goat cheese
A handful baby leaves

Chop nectarines, grill the squash, chop the cheese. Put on a plate. I have experienced, that salad is actually much more pretty when served on a dish rather than in a bowl. It is also more easy to get a little of everything on your plate. But when cooking for many people, a bowl is more appropriate.

Chicken (for two people):
2 chicken upper thighs
3 chicken lower thighs
40g butter
A bunch of rosemary
Lime zest

Mix together butter, chopped rosemary and lime zest from half a lime. Today I learned, that if you have not had the butter out to warm up, you can actually grate it, and then it is easy to mix with other stuff. Squeeze the flavored butter underneath the skin and massage it about. Also put some on the outside of the skin. Cook the chicken for 40 minutes on 200 degrees Celsius, and finish off with 5 minutes on grill, to make the skin crispy - if it is not already so.

I used a thermometer to measure that the chicken was cooked properly. On the packaging, it actually said Danish chicken - Salmonella free (I love when this is the case, it makes me more confident when cooking). I assume, that even though the chicken is salmonella free, it could have other stuff in it, so it still should be cooked through.

Shrimp taco

Now. My first real post. As my boyfriend is away on festival, I saw my chance to make a little mess in the kitchen (not that he would mind at all - on the contrary), but sometimes it is just nice to fumble around alone, when uncertain whether the results will be fulfilling or not.

In the kitchen, all that was left was garlic and a couple of taco shells. Usually we make tacos with minced beef, so this was actually my first ever attempt on a shrimp taco.

I decided to prepare the shrimps with some garlic, chili, lime, cumin and paprika spice. Besides the shrimps, I made a salsa and a dressing with spring onion as the primary taste - I would have used fresh coriander for the dressing, but sometimes the world does not agree on your plan. No fresh, so I used the dried, which is kinda coriander tasty, but very different from the fresh taste.

For the salsa, I chopped tomatoes, chili, garlic, onion, couple of spring onions and bell pepper.

For the dressing, I chopped a lot of spring onions, crushed garlic, lime, and a mix of skyr and creme fraiche

The shrimps, I just mixed with paprika, cumin, chili and garlic. Lime was sprinkled over when cooking.

The final result. A bit blurry, but at this time I was hungry!

Both the salsa and the dressing, I made a couple of hours before cooking the meal, so the flavors could mix well. This also gave room for a nice run :) For the dressing, I used skyr, which is an Icelandig cultured dairy product - very popular in Denmark right now. As it is very low fat, I mixed some creme fraiche in it.

Some of the different spices and seasonings is used in every part of the meal, but in my opinion it actually gives a different taste depending on what it is used for. - Also, it helps not wasting any groceries.

My inspiration for this blog is partly described in "The what and the why", but when coming up with a name for the blog, I actually liked the idea of an imperfect meal. These days, everything has to be perfect, or else it is not worth the while, but this has for me resulted in actually almost never cooking. To try to change this view on cooking, I have challenged myself to just do it - cook with the heart (yada yada yada). Or at least taste your food when cooking, instead of believing the many many bad recipes out there. I know that this will result in some bland food once in a while - hopefully most will be edible though, and if so I must just try to do something different the next time. I therefore intent to be honest in my posts, but again I think it is up to the reader to make a sanity check of the recipe before cooking away.

Okay - so the result.... It was actually good, tasty and easy. And I have easy leftovers for tomorrow, since the amount of salsa and dressing was more than enough.

Regarding the recipes - I will note the measures in standard units, and not crazy stuff, like cups and ounces and so on. Perhaps one day, I will program a converter, which will make it easy for everyone to interpret the recipes.

RECIPE
Salsa:
2 tomatoes - unfortunately, mine was not in top season, so the tomato taste was a bit missing
1/2 chili - taste on it, some are spicy some are not
2 spring onions
1 onion - small
1 clove garlic
1 red bell pepper
Salt
Pepper
A little olive oil
Lime to taste

Chop everything into small pieces and mix together. The lime actually brings out a lot of flavor, even though my tomatoes were not the best. Put in the fridge for an hour or two to let the flavors mix together.

Dressing:
1/2 dL skyr - or greak youghurt or just creme fraiche
1/2 dL creme fraiche - 15% or what you like
A bunddle of spring onions
3 cloves of garlic - pressed
Dried coriander spice - to taste
Salt
Pepper
Lime to taste

Chop the spring onions in small pieces and mix with other ingredients. Leave in fridge to bring out the flavors.

Filling:
100g shrimps - this was okay for two taco shells
1/2 chili
1 clove of garlic - pressed
Salt
Pepper
Cumin
Paprika
A little olive oil
Lime

Chop the chili and press the garlic and mix with other ingredients except lime. Heat pan. Meanwhile heat taco shells in oven. When the pan is very hot, fry the shrimps for a couple of minuts - all liquid should be fried away. Finally press half a lime or so over the shrimps and cook until the juice is gone.

Fill your taco shell the way you like it.

What and why.

I made this blog just to have somewhere to put pictures of the food, I occasionally make. I am not very good at cooking, but I really like to cook. I very much enjoy food, and I could need a hobby, hence the blog.

Also hopefully, my creative mind will develop during my blog posts and cooking. As an academic person with a master in science, creativity has never really been a part of my life - all the way through my upbringing, subjects covering mathematics and logics has filled my head mostly. But my logic says, that it must be possible to learn to be creative. Maybe cooking (and putting together different tastes) is possible just by using logics and trial and error.

The food that I will post on this blog will mainly be, what I think is healthy food - not fanatic - just not the easy, greasy kind I tend go for, when cooking for myself.

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Update:
I have decided to rank my dishes on a scale from one star *---- to five stars *****. One meaning - Meh, five meaning - Woah, did I make that.