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Saturday, February 2, 2013

Royal Flusher's Cookin' School - Lesson 1: Curried Chicken

If you are going to be a top-notch savvy degenerate gambler like The Flusher, you have to take care of your body. Your body is a temple. And your head is the head of the temple. And your temples are the temples of your temple.

Even if you are stressed like I am with the death of North American Veeblefetzer and the messy Norbert-fathered birth of Royal Canadian Veeblefetzer, you've gotta take care of the hot bod'.

It's the body that pushes the money into the machines, and the body that pushes the buttons that make you most likely lose the money. So it pays to keep your temple running in peak condition.

I recommend you do this with food.

Jimmy Poon taught me how to make a pretty decent curried chicken in a single frying pan.

And because it is still a few days out until my guest blogger coughs up a trip report, and a few weeks until Mrs. Flusher and I go and beat the crap out of Nevada (yes it's coming...), I'm going to fill your heads with cooking info, since that's what I got.

Okay, here's the way I go about it to make it easy. What you need:

Chicken parts. I recommend boneless skinless thighs from Costco. I buy a tray of about 25 or 30 of 'em.

Big-ass onion or two. I use vidalia onions cause I like 'em sweet.

Big-ass can of salt free crushed or chopped tomatoes. Again, this is the way I do it, if you want sodium, be my guest.

Other vegetables. Could be a green pepper or two, a red pepper or two. Don't use carrots, they take forever to cook. Maybe simplest to go with the peppers if you like 'em.

Jalapeno or two if you like it spicy baby yeah....! Or maybe some other source of hotness.

Olive oil. It's the best oil for you.

Corn starch. You need it. Even though you don't cook, you need it.

Big-ass pan. I use a teflon frying pan that has 3" sides and a lid. You really need a lid for simmerin' to work right.

Secret fucking ingredient....

THIS:


Yes, good old PATAK's curry paste. They have a variety and you can choose whatever you want. You can also do Thai with this same recipe, just find some Thai green or red curry paste and some coconut - but let's keep it simple okay?

You don't really have to use Patak's. There are tons of other brands out there. Don't get cooking sauce or some other marketing crap, or powder - get paste.

Okay.

Here we go.

Prep your vegetables. Chop that onion first, put some olive oil in the pan for lube and get it going in the pan over medium low to medium heat. You want to get those onions glassine, sweat 'em a bit, not fry the shit out of them and not brown or burn them.

While the onions are doing their thing gently in the pan, get the other veggies ready. Wash 'em. Chop 'em up throwing out the stems and innards and whatever else is non-edible about your veggie choices. Put them in a big bowl and stir 'em up so that you could take a picture. We want a nice balance of color and texture so the photos look good. Okay, never mind that. It's bullshit. Just put 'em in a big bowl.

Once those onions are nicely pre-cooked and glassine (maybe 10 minutes?) get their asses out of the pan and in with the other veg.

Now we're gonna use the pan for the chicken. Add a little oil if you think you need to and lay those boneless skinless thighs in there. Open them up so they are flat in the pan.

Not like this, all curled up:

But like this, spreadeagled and ready for the heat like the bitches they are:

Okay, so now we are cooking the thighs over medium-low heat or so. Not too hot, okay? Just let them cook away until you can see the color change at the edges and moving to the center of the meat. You could check the underside from time to time and if you see golden brown going on, your pan is too hot - they'll be a bit tough, but still good.The edges will show the whitish cooked color first and just leave them there until there is just a bit of raw meat still in the center.

When you get to that point, flip 'em over.

Don't worry about cutting these bitches up before you start cooking them. When they are almost cooked, you can easily break them into pieces with a plastic flipper. If you don't want to, don't. I do, I like to be sure they are cooked through.

When the chicken is done, it's time for the onions to go back in the pan.

And now... the curry paste. Crank that jar open and stir up the amazing Patak's brand spices inside. I use maybe two heaping teaspoon dollops of the paste. It all depends on how strong you want your curry to be.

So get your curry paste in there and stir it around the onions and chicken. We want to cook it for just a minute or two to release the flavors.

Add in the rest of your raw veg and stir fry that up for a while. Not too long, we just want to help those raw veggies along a bit. 3,4,5 minutes maybe?

If you are feeling naughty and spicy, chop up those hot jalapenos, seranos, or whatever else you want to use to blow the back of your tonsils out with in whatever method you want to use and chuck the right amount in there for you. It depends on your taste, the hotness of the peppers, etc. You may very well want to just forget about this part - its totally up to you.


Now the hard part is done, and the rest is easy.

Crank open the can of tomatoes and dump those mothers into the pan.
Stir it all up.

Turn the heat down to Low, like quite low.

Put the lid on your pan, and let that sucker simmer for a while.

Give it 5 to 10 minutes and go and check - you want it to be simmering gently, not boil the shit out of it.

You can give it a stir from time to time, but don't beat the crap out of it. Open a nice cold beer and let the slow heat do the work, like makin' love slow on a humid summer's evening, except you're doin' it in a frying pan, not a hammock on some Susan Sarandon porch somewhere.

Now get your rice happening - well, maybe not yet if it is microwave rice - you just want it hot, fluffy and ready (!) when the curry is done.

You're gonna simmer that amazing curry for about half an hour, maybe a bit longer. Do you like mushy veg? Simmer longer. Crisper? stick to the half hour.

You really don't want to go past 40 minutes into like an hour or more because things will start to fall apart and the chicken will disintegrate and get stringy.

Okay, you think its almost done and you're rice is ready - time to get serious with some thickening action. We chefs like it thick, not runny, right? Right.

Make some thickener. How do you do that? You take a little bowl or mug or something and put about two heaping teaspoons of corn starch in there. Now you add about the equal amount of cool water to it. Stir that shit around so the corn starch all of a sudden gives in to your wiles and turns from a powder to a slurry all of a sudden. It's cool how that happens.

Listen to me readers, this is cooking science right here.... always add the water to the corn starch not the other way around. It makes a difference. And don't have lumps in there. Any lumps you add to your curry will stay as lumps no matter what you do.

To add the cornstarch mixture to the curry, make yourself a hole in the curried food so you can get at a patch of the amazing gravy, albeit runny amazing gravy. Here's how you have to do it - as you add the thickener cornstarch mixture to the sauce, stir it in. If you don't, you get dumplings. Which is another recipe. You don't have to take all day, just make sure you stir it in as you pour it.

Now mix that shit up all around and through and let it cook for one or two more minutes and.... beautiful thick curry sauce loaded with veg and chicken hunks. Pour that shit over rice and you have a meal, baby.

What's more, it microwaves up like a sumbitch, so you can have it for a bunch of meals over a couple of days. Three maybe at the most. Should freeze well too.

I let the whole pan cool and put the entire thing in the fridge.

And that's it!

Here's the summary:
  • Cut and cook the onions
  • remove the onions
  • cook the chicken
  • add back onions and the curry paste
  • add the rest of the veg and fry everything for a few minutes
  • add the tomatoes and turn the heat down
  • cover and simmer that mother for half an hour
  • thicken and serve

You can change this up - you can put diced fresh tomatoes in there, or canned and fresh, you can use more or less curry paste. You can use more tomatoes if you want. Different vegetables... more or less thickener...

I hope you'll give it a go sometime. You could always try it out with just a small amount of ingredients - like half an onion, 3 thighs, half a pepper, and half a can of tomatoes. Sort of quarter the ingredients.

Actually, I think that would be a good way to learn this if you fuck up, you don't waste a whole lot of grocery money.

Until next lesson,

Chef Royal Flusher





    4 comments:

    1. Hi Royal Flusher - Thanks for suggesting a pan with Teflon® nonstick coating for your Curried Chicken recipe. I represent DuPont and it's always a pleasure to see people recommending our products.

      If you are interested in some recipes to look at for your cookware with Teflon® nonstick coatings, visit http://www.scribd.com/TeflonBrand! Also, feel free to check out our Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/teflonbrand) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/teflonbrand) pages! Thanks. Cheers, Sara

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. Sara, everyone knows that Teflon® brand nonstick coating was specifically designed for no-talent curry chefs like me to be successful with! Viva la Teflon® brand nonstick coating!!!!!

        I'm now racing off to view the stunning, exciting recipes at http://www.scribd.com/TeflonBrand!

        One question Sara - does Teflon® brand nonstick coating work with canned processed meats, such as SPAM?

        Delete
    2. LOL! At the comments!

      I think I may actually try this recipe if I can figure out what kind of curry paste to buy.

      ReplyDelete

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