Well.
Here it is.
Red curry chicken with peppers, water chestnuts, basil (from teh garden – of course!) and coconut milk over rice. It was good, but I have to wonder about the amount of curry paste I used. Every recipe I looked up (you all know about praising da Google by now) called for using one tablespoon – and commenters were still fretting about the dish being too spicy. Even the curry packaging said: “for a milder flavour, half portion of the curry paste should be used” – so I was expecting a nice explosion of taste and some spiciness.
Meh.
Don’t get me wrong – it was good – it just had about as much of a bite to it as your average peanut butter and jelly sammich.
Oh well – since I have a ton of the curry paste left – I will just have to try again. Actually, I found a recipe for curried wonton appetizers that looks nice, but I’ll have to get a deep fryer first (the comments on THAT recipe claim that it alone is worth the price of buying one). Anyway – back to the red curry chicken. This was a crock pot recipe that I adapted just a bit – I didn’t use bok choy and I didn’t cook it for SIX hours (!) Our crock pot cooks rather quickly, but that still seemed a bit much for boneless, skinless chicken, which is what I used. In any event, here’s the recipe as I made it – next time I will easily double the curry paste, and maybe the ginger as well; but if you want to live on the edge and make curry at home with no fears of too much heat, go for it as is.
INGREDIENTS
•1 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced – I used red and yellow peppers
•1 can water chestnuts, drained and rinsed
•1 lb skinless boneless chicken breast halves – I used thighs
•Salt and ground black pepper
•1/2 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth – I used some pork broth I had in the freezer
•1/2 cup sake (rice wine)
•2 tsp sesame oil
•1 tbsp minced fresh ginger
•1 tbsp red curry paste
•1 (14 oz) can light coconut milk
•1/4 cup freshly chopped cilantro leaves, for garnish – I used basil
Combine sake, sesame oil, ginger, curry paste and broth together. Season with salt and pepper.
Put peppers and water chestnuts in the bottom of your slow cooker and arrange the chicken on top. Pour curry mixture over and cook on low for about 3 hours. Stir in the coconut milk and heat though. Serve over rice.