Chicken Curry

Chicken Curry or Curry Kapitan (as the Nyonya call it) is one of my favorite dish. I love it with bread, particularly white bread or rice. I like it saucy so I can soak my bread into it like a sponge or pour it over my rice until the rice drown in the sauce. I would drink the sauce like soup when we have emptied the potatoes and chicken and clean the pots and plates with bread. I can't have enough of it.
Where ever I go, when I am away from home for too long, if I miss any food back home, curry chicken is one of them.

The following serves 2 very hungry adults.

Onion Paste:
Blend the following into a smooth paste. Drizzle in some cooking oil and pulverize if you have difficulty getting a smooth paste. If you have a stone mortar, even better. Just work your arm until you get a smooth paste.

   A handful of shallots or 1 large red onion

   2 cloves garlic
   1 small piece of ginger* (no larger than a medium size olive, optional)
   dried chilli, soaked in hot water until soft or chilli powder (optional)

Curry paste
   1 packet of Miss Curry Kapitan powder
Mix the curry powder with 1 or 2 tablespoon of water, just enough for the curry power to combine into a thick paste.

Ingredients:

2 whole chicken thighs
4 potatoes
1/2 cup of vegetable oil or olive oil
1/2 cup coconut milk or 1/2 cup milk
1 cinnamon stick (about 2 - 3 inch)
1 star anise
few black pepper corn, crash
1 lemongrass (white part only), crashed 
1/2 liter of liquid, water or chicken stock
salt to season

Preparations:

1. Separate the drumstick from the thigh part. You can ask your butcher to do this for you.
2. Clean, peel and chopped the potatoes into large chunks.

Cooking:
Heat the cooking oil until pipping hot. Turn to medium heat, add in the onion paste and stir occasionally to prevent the onion paste from sticking to the pot. Saute until fragrance or soft, take care not to brown the paste. Add in the curry paste, cinnamon stick, star anise, crashed pepper corn, crashed lemon grass and continue to saute the mixture until you smell the fragrance of the spices. Another indicator is when the paste is just about to start sticking at the bottom of the pot.

Add in the chicken and coat it evenly with the curry paste. Gradually add in the liquid, mixing and diluting the curry paste into a sauce. Add in the potatoes and add more water or stock making sure that the chicken are well covered if required.

Bring the liquid to a boil before turning down to medium low heat, cover and simmer. Gently stirring the bottom occasionally (to make sure that the bottom does not stick), simmer until the chicken is thoroughly cooked and the potatoes are soft. Turn to high heat and bring to a boil before stirring in coconut milk and mixed evenly. Add salt to taste and bring the sauce to a boil and it is ready. Serve with cooked rice or bread.

Notes:
Miss Khoo's curry powder can be ordered online or simply use the generic chicken curry powder from the supermarket or Asian store. The curry powder I used here contains coriander, cardamon, cloves, turmeric, fennel, cumin, garlic, ginger, cinnamon, chilli (it is labeled as moderately spicy), white pepper, star anise seeds and salt. Alternately, any generic curry powder for meat.

Vegetable Curry

This is perhaps one of my favorite vegetarian dishes. To say the least, it is flavorful and aromatic. You can use any combination of your preferred vegetables. As the season changes, you may use cauliflower, fresh beans, peas, eggplants, cabbage, potatoes, peppers and carrots. This dish warms you up in cold days and helps you break into a sweat in summer.

Ingredients: (Serves 2 very hungry adults)
A handful of shallots or 1 medium red onion
2 cloves garlic
1 small piece of ginger (no larger than a small olive, optional)
dried chilli or chilli powder (optional)
1 Eggplant
1 - 2 carrot
3 medium potato
1 green or red pepper
1 packet of Miss Khoo's Essential Curry Powder
1/2 cup of vegetable oil or olive oil

1/2 pack coconut milk or 1/2 cup milk
water
salt and pepper to season

Preparations:
Soak dried chilli in a bowl of hot water for about 30 minutes or until soften. In an electrical blender, pulverize ginger, garlic, onion and dried chilli into a paste (nevertheless, pulverizing these ingredient in a stone mortar is even better). Drizzle in some cooking oil and pulverize if you find the mixture hard to get into a paste.

In a small bowl, mix the curry powder into a thick paste with a little water. Cut the vegetables into cubes or wedges to your preferred size (presumably you already un-bitter the eggplant).

Lightly fry the eggplants in a large pot with a few table spoon of cooking oil, remove and set aside. 

In the same pot, heat the vegetable oil until pipping hot. Turn to medium heat and add in the onion paste saute continuously (this will prevent it from sticking to the pot and burn) until fragrance. Add in the curry powder paste and continue to saute the mixture until you can smell the fragrance of the curry powder. Add in cubed vegetables and mix before adding water, just enough to cover the vegetables. Turn to high heat and bring to a boil before turning it down to a simmer. Stirring occasionally, continue to simmer until the vegetables are soft and cooked. Add in coconut milk, salt and pepper to season and bring it to a boil and it is ready. Serve with rice or bread.

Notes:
Miss Khoo's curry powder can be ordered online or simply use the generic curry powder from the supermarket or Asian store. The curry powder i used here contains coriander, cardamon, cloves, turmeric, fennel, cumin, garlic, ginger, cinnamon, chilli (it is labeled as moderately spicy), white pepper, star anise seeds and salt. If there is a choice, pick something for vegetables otherwise, any curry powder will do.

Curry

As I am trying to write something about curry in my own words, I could almost smell the rich flavors of it, the spice that tingles on my tongue, my mouth starts to fill with saliva (and it is early in the morning!) and I have this urge to cook huge pot of curry.

This "introduction" is meant for those of you who do not know what curry is. So what is curry? Simply put it, it is a saucy dish (or stew) flavored with spices (think cinnamon, anise seed, cloves etc) and for those who love some heat in their food, it can be made very spicy (think chilli) but depending on region, it may not be spicy at all (like the Thai green curry or the Indian dhal).

According to Wikipedia's definition, Curry is a generic description used throughout Western culture to describe a variety of spiced dishes .... Three spices found in most curry powders are turmeric, coriander and cumin; a wide range of additional spices may be included depending on the geographic region and the foods being included (meats, fish, lentils, rice, etc.). The word "curry" is analogous to "soup" or "stew" in that there is no particular ingredient that makes something "curry".

So, lets get on with the cooking shall we?

Chicken Curry

Vegatable Curry