Green Curry Chicken

My first attempt at making curry – I’m writing it down here to jog my own memory as much as anything else because I won’t mind being able to duplicate it.

This experiment lead to a delicious meal, actually two meals.  Our supermarket carries all kind of curry products.  I bought the curry sauce and curry paste; never touched the powdered curry I have in the cupboard.  The curry sauce was ready to go, very spicy.  The curry paste needed to be diluted with the coconut milk.  If I hadn’t had the spicy sauce, I might have tossed in a few jalepeno slices.  I was working without a recipe or any kind of authentic instructions.

Inspiration came from three sources;

1. A meal we shared 32 years ago at the Schwartz home in St. Pete.  It was the first time I’d had curry and it was very good, but so good that I remember what we ate after more than three decades? . . .  It was the day after my husband asked me to marry him.   A lot of that day is etched in my mind like it was yesterday.  <3
2. A recipe for curry given to me by our friend, Clay, who is an excellent cook.  I’ve read it but never fixed it, and alas, that recipe is in Tucson.
3. A conversation I had earlier in the day with Brooke, my friend who is getting into wok cooking in a big way.  Brooke told me about the curry soup she’d made the night before, and she made it sound so non-intimidating – as if you don’t need a cookbook or ethnic ties, just do it, like you were putting together a stew!

Ingredients

8 chicken thighs
seasoning salt & black pepper
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 leek, white and light green parts only, sliced
1 small onion, diced
3 carrots, grated
4 stalks celery, sliced
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup peanuts
1 1/ 2 cups green curry sauce
1/2 cup green curry paste
2 cups coconut milk
2 roasted red peppers, diced (I used peppers from a jar)
rice, cooked according to directions (I used Uncle Ben’s brown rice)
2 green onions, sliced

Directions

• Season chicken with salt and pepper
• In a frying pan, brown both sides of the chicken in 2 tablespoons olive oil
• In a Dutch oven, heat remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil, cook leek and onion until tender
• Add carrot, celery and red pepper to the Dutch oven, cooking for about 5 minutes
• Add cranberries, peanuts, curry sauce, curry paste, coconut milk red peppers, and the chicken to the Dutch oven, bring to a boil, reduce heat to warm-low, and simmer for 75 – 90 minutes
• Serve over rice and garnish with green onion

Serves 4