From G's to Chefs - Curried Away

I’ve never really cared for Indian food, and that has bothered me a bit lately.  I know everyone has their own likes and dislikes, but if I want to become a better cook, how will I be able to get new ideas and expand my culinary knowledge if I automatically cut out an entire subset of food?  On a broader sense, too, I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded person, yet there are a lot of foods I simply don’t think I like.  Japanese, Indian, Thai – they just never resonated with me.  Not that I am afraid of these cuisines, but I just never have been excited by them.

Part of my dislike for Indian food may be due to my first experience eating it.  My brother and sister were visiting me in Ames, and Stacia and I decided we’d take them out to eat at a unique place.  We ended up deciding on the local Indian restaurant, which was a bit of a gamble, since we’d not yet tried it ourselves.  It ended up that most of our fears were mostly unfounded, as the bulk of the food was pretty good.  I don’t know how authentic it was, but the Curry item I tried seemed decent but pretty blah - nothing to write home about one way or another.

The side dish was another story.  Not being familiar with Indian cuisine, I again don’t know how common this is, but my meal came with a side of yogurt, or “jo-gurt” as the waitress pronounced it.  It arrived in a small shallow rectangular container, vaguely reminiscent of a sardine can, and consisted of thin milky liquid with tic-tac sized chunks scattered throughout.  I decided to be brave, which I perhaps shouldn’t have been, for it was like chewing sour milk in a salt water broth.  Perhaps that’s not entirely surprising, since to a certain extent yogurt is solidified milk, but let me just say it was horribly unappetizing and put me off Indian food for a long time.

So when I was home this weekend and my Mom proposed we have Fragrant Chicken Curry, my initial reaction was less than enthusiastic.  Then I thought about how long it had been since I had decided I “didn’t like” Indian food, and realized I was being silly not to give it another shot.  So I voted we give it a try, a sentiment resoundingly echoed by my less biased siblings.  And as we got the recipe together, planned the shopping, and started cooking, I began to grow more excited about the prospect.

The recipe was incredibly simple, and turned out to be a lot of fun.  We started from a rotisserie chicken – the ones at the grocery store near the deli.  I’ve grown much less intimidated by raw meat in the past several years, so I probably could have handled using raw if that was specified.  However, I think the rotisserie chicken was a shortcut, and would make for a good option on nights when you don’t feel like doing a ton of cooking.  Most times I enjoy even rather time-intensive preparations, but there are certainly days where grabbing a pre-cooked chicken and doing just a little prep on it sounds nice.

So there we were, my sister and I, with a chicken that needed to become chicken pieces.  Time to roll up our sleeves and start literally pulling the meat off the bones.  Now, in theory you could use a fork for this job, but where’s the fun in that?  Before too long, we had reduced our chicken to a mostly bare set of bones and had a surprisingly large bowl of meat.  But we weren’t quite satisfied, and my sister in particular seemed to want to get every scrap off the carcass.  Which is where things took a turn for the macabre… ;)

As I stand there peeling small bits of meat out from between the ribs, my sister holds up what appears to be a spine and implores that I check it out.  I take a look, give an approving response and turn back to what I was doing.  Then I hear a loud crack from next to me and see that she has broken the backbone apart and is peering at a little pink strip hanging out from between the vertebrae: what can only be a section of the spinal cord.  I can’t say for sure which of us suggested that she eat it (I really don’t think it was me) but it ended up not taking much coaxing.  Correct me if I’m wrong, Karin, but I believe it was spongy and hard to chew, and I know it ended up feeling like it was caught in her throat until she had a snack a little later.  Needless to say, I didn’t try any spine.  I told you my siblings were more adventurous than me!

Lest you become frightened, let me reassure you that no spinal cord made it into the final recipe, which was quite delicious.  It was a simple mixture of some sautéed onion and garlic, a ton of curry powder with a few other spices, the chicken, and cans of coconut milk and tomatoes.  We simmered it all together for 20 minutes or so, added a little corn starch to thicken, and served it over some jasmine rice.  As the finishing touch, my Mom incredibly found a jar of mango chutney that had been in the pantry for many months, and served that alongside.  As awesome as the food was without, the mango gave it a little extra kick of sweet and spicy (great combo) to really finish the dish.

In the end the Chicken Curry really helped solidify my thoughts that I need to be more adventurous and give up some of my old inhibitions about food.  I already do that for the most part, but there are some areas where I’ve been a little obstinate.  I thought I didn’t like Indian food, but this dish was spicy yet very flavorful, with a sweet and zippy punch from the mango chutney.  The recipe used coconut milk, which I’ve always thought makes food taste weird, but it ended up making a nice creamy sauce without being overpowering.  And it was super easy to make, which I suppose I didn’t have any hangups about, but is still a good thing.

So, while I might not have eaten jo-gurt or chicken spine, I tried something I thought I disliked, and it was great.  There aren’t a lot of foods on that “don’t like” list, but it seems like a few more of them need to get another try.