Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Chicken Mango Curry

chickenmangocurry

Look friends, a recipe post! I actually made this dish a few weeks ago but couldn’t find the card reader for my memory card – no memory card = no pictures = no post (because look how beautiful this dish is!)

Chicken Mango Curry

adapted with few changes from simply recipes

serves 4

Ingredients:

  • 1 T grapeseed Oil (or vegetable oil)
  • 1 c chopped peppers (I used a frozen medley of red, yellow and green, thawed)
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2 T curry powder
  • 1 T ginger (or use 2 T fresh minced ginger)
  • 1/2 t cumin
  • 1 c chopped mango (I used frozen, thawed)
  • 2 T apple cider vinegar
  • 1 can light coconut milk (or regular if you prefer)
  • 1 lb chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces
  • salt and pepper
  • cilantro, for garnish

Directions:

Heat oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and ginger and cook for another minute. Add  curry powder and cumin, cook for a few more minutes. The spices will absorb most of the oil, so add up to an additional tablespoon of oil to the pan if needed to prevent sticking.

Add vinegar, coconut milk, and a 1/2 cup of the chopped mangoes to the pan. Increase heat and bring to a boil, then lower it to maintain a low simmer for about 15 minutes, stir occasionally. Remove pan from heat. Scoop the sauce into a blender or food processor. Purée the sauce until it’s smooth. Return the sauce to the pan.

Add chicken pieces to the pan. Return to a low simmer. Cover the pan and let cook for 8-10 minutes. Chicken should be just cooked through. Check the thickest piece of chicken for doneness.

Add the rest of the chopped mango to the pan. Let cook at a very low temperature for another minute or two, uncovered. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve over a bed of basmati rice, garnish with freshly chopped cilantro.

Enjoy!

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Since you’ve been gone away

I had the month of April off from grad school. My intentions were to go to the gym (almost every day, I was being reasonable), blog more and clean my apartment from top to bottom. I was unsuccessful at all of those things. And what bothered me the most? The blogging one. I miss blogging, I really do. And I honestly don’t know how all of you who have jobs, go to school, have families, etc. have time for it. Maybe it’s just that I don’t make the time for it, I don’t know. But then I got to thinking. Do I blog so I can put content out there to inspire others or did blogging inspire me in ways I never expected? In the end I realized that before blogging my spice collection consisted of dried oregano and garlic powder. Now I have spices in there I cannot pronounce but I’m proud to say I use on the regular. Before blogging I never made my own pizza dough, cinnamon rolls or any ethnic inspired dish other than enchiladas. I’d love to say that I’m making a comeback, really I would. But I can’t promise it.

Tonight marks the first night of classes for my 3rd grad school term. Like a nerd in a bookstore (read: me), I’m half excited to listen to my professor go over the syllabus and half anxious about the time the work will take away from catching up on Mad Men on netflix. Or tackling my never ending, always growing laundry pile. And dishes? I can’t even find my sink anymore. See? My priorities are skewed at best but in the end, I know that reading another chapter from my Aural Rehabilitation textbook is probably more important at this juncture than writing a half-hearted blog post about the out-of-this-world fried ice cream I made on Cinco de Mayo. (Though I WILL tell you about that some day – it’s too late for you to make it for Cinco de Mayo anyway).

To sum up this rambling, I just want you to know (5 readers – if there are still 5 of you) that this blog is not done. That is the one promise I can make.

Tell me, regular bloggers, how do you make time to blog? Or just tell me that I’m terribly lazy and have poor time-management skills. Or tell me anything, really.