Spicy Chicken With Garbanzo Beans (Indian Style)

Indian food is right up there with Thai on my list of favorites.  This dish is inspired by but not exactly Indian food.

Finished dish served with rice

Ingredients

Collection of ingredients (peppers not shown)

• 2 chicken breasts, cut in quarters
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 1/2 inch piece of ginger, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 serrano pepper, chopped
• 1 can (15 oz) garbanzo beans (chickpeas)
• 1 can (14 oz) diced tomatoes (I used half of a 28 oz can because it was cheaper)
• 1 1/2 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp curry powder -- make your own if you like.  It was easier for me to transport a single bottle of spice.
• 1 tsp dried mint (fresh would be nice).  I found some fairly cheap spearmint in the Mexican section of the store (14 grams for $0.61).
• 3 tbsp chopped cilantro, plus some for garnish
• salt to taste (I used about 1/4 to 1/3 tsp)
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt -- try an extra spoonful on top of each serving
• rice -- see previous entries for cooking instructions

Directions

Onions, ginger, and garlic -- the holy trinity of Eastern cooking

1. Add ginger, garlic, onion (the holy trinity), and butter to cooking bowl.
2. Cover, cook about 4 minutes on medium (50%).
3. Add chicken breasts, stir, cook 10 minutes on medium.
4. Add everything except the yogurt and cilantro (beans, tomatoes, garam masala, curry powder, peppers, mint).
5. Cook 8 to 10 minutes on medium.
6. Add salt to taste.
7. Add yogurt and cliantro.



Garam Masala.  Good stuff.

8. Cook 4 to 5 minutes on high. 
9. Serve on rice, sprinkle with cilantro

How was it?
Today, it was flavorful, but not too spicy.  Another serrano pepper would have been good to add.

How much did it cost?
Today, it ran about $4.75, with the bulk of that being the chicken breast.  If you cook enough rice, it should easily feed four or five people.  I had 4 people from the office sample it, and with my two large servings only about half was used.  It will make some tasty leftovers.

What should be done in a real kitchen?
Lightly brown the meat for the nice Maillard reactions (carmelized sugaring).  This is really hard to do in a microwave.

Cook some naan.  Indian food is always better with naan.

Peppers and Cilantro

What would I do differently next time?
Save the yogurt until after the cooking.  It was tasty as I cooked it, but it would have been smoother (no lumping) if it was added just prior to serving.

Adding some red pepper would have been good for increasing the heat a little more without the slight bitterness of additional serrano peppers.

I probably would add more mint next time (when increasing the amount of spicy heat).  The cool flavor of mint and yogurt really balances out the heat of Indian food.

Cooked food, before adding yogurt and cilantro

Finished curry

(Something Resembling) Red Thai Chicken Curry

Mmm.  Thai food must be one of the world's greatest inventions.  Today was a "cook some curry at work" day for my lunch.

Finished curry with rice

Ingredients
Before listing these, I should note that I do not like measuring things properly.  As such, most of these numbers are estimates based on what I happened to dump into the cooking bowls.

Caldo, fish sauce, coconut milk, curry paste, garlic, and ginger

• rice (about 1.5 cups dry) -- today it was Calrose
• 1 chicken breast, cubed
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 inch piece of ginger, chopped -- more would have been good, but the flavors just wouldn't meld in the microwave
• 1 tsp (or cube) chicken bouillon -- "Caldo con sobre de pollo" was what I had handy
• 1/2 eggplant in roughly 1/2 to 3/4 inch cubes
• 2 or 3 medium mushrooms, coarsely sliced
• 1/2 can (about 2.5 ounces) sliced bamboo shoots, sliced up a bit
• 1 can (about 5 ounces) sliced water chestnuts, sliced up a bit
• 4 tsp red curry paste
• 1 can (around 13 oz) coconut milk
• 4-5 tsp Thai fish sauce 

Mushrooms, eggplant, bamboo shoots, and water chestnuts

Sticky rice. For non-sticky rice, add less water and avoid stirring.

Directions for rice

1. Put dry rice in bowl with a lid
2. Add about 2.5 cups water.
3. Cover and microwave on high for about 5 minutes
4. Stir and microwave on about 40% power for 9 to 12 minutes.  Cook until the water is absorbed.

Raw chicken with onions, garlic, "Caldo", and ginger

Directions for curry

1. Put chicken in bowl with a lid
2. Add chopped onion, garlic, ginger.
3. Add chicken bouillon; add 1/2 cup water if your chicken breast did not have water added (mine did).
4. Cook about 8 minutes on 60% power, stirring occasionally.
5. Add curry paste and stir well
6. Cook about 1 minute on high
7. Add coconut milk
8. Cook another minute on high
9. Add fish sauce (don't spill this, the smell won't go away)
10. Add eggplant, mushrooms, bamboo, water chestnuts



Adding curry paste to cooked chicken.  I used this much plus a little more.






Cooked chicken with curry paste










11. Stir and cook about 6 to 7 minutes on high, stirring occasionally

Fully cooked with vegetables

How did it turn out?
It was quite edible today.  I would have preferred a spicier curry paste, or potentially adding some spicy peppers.

How much did it cost?
If I add up everything I used, I find that I used about $7.75 worth of ingredients.  The bulk of that cost was the coconut milk ($2.30 per can, but you can find it cheaper at an Asian market), chicken (about $1.25 in my bulk pack), and curry paste (I used about $1.10 worth, but cheaper and better options are available).  The vegetables are fairly cheap, having used about $0.70 worth of eggplant, $0.45 for the mushrooms, $0.65 for bamboo shoots (you should be able to get them for cheaper than $1.29 per can), and $0.65 for water chestnuts.  The other ingredients are more difficult to measure, so I estimated less than $0.10 each for the remaining ingredients.

While the total may look expensive, it really did make a lot of curry.  You could easily get four to six servings out of this.  I shared with two people at work and still had enough left for a couple of late lunches.

What would I do differently in a real kitchen?
If I had a real stove top, I could cook the garlic, ginger, and onions better (with a little oil) to bring a more smooth flavor.  One thing that would really have made this dish good is to add kieffer lime leaves.  It would only take 2 or 3 leaves, but the fresh flavor it would bring could well make it worth the trip to your Asian market.

The coconut milk that I bought had some additives.  It doesn't thicken quite like the less shelf stable cans.


Can I substitute ingredients?
I'll always say yes to this.  Here is what I think could be substituted for an equally delicious curry:

• Water chestnuts:  Try some jicama for a delicious crunch, with the added benefit of less salt.  You could also use a few small potatoes, but you'll need to cook them just until you can easily pierce them with a fork.  I suspect that this would need to be added about 1/4 of the way through the final cooking stage to avoid making a potato mash.
• Chicken bouillon: Use a bit of chicken stock (avoid making it too runny), or in a pinch go for a small amount of a powdered soup packet.
• Chicken: Go for some thin slices of beef.
• Eggplant: Cauliflower is excellent in curry.  It tends to go soggy, so I like to add it almost half-way through the cooking process.

 Anything else I could add?
Sure.  Besides the kieffer lime leaves (drool inducing), you could try:

• bell peppers
• spicy peppers
• fresh lemon grass (again, back to your Asian market)
• Any of the ingredients listed in the substitutions above

Further comments
It is worth noting that the particular curry paste I used here was overly expensive for the amount of curry you can make.  If you look around, you can probably find a small tub of much stronger (both flavor-wise and heat) stuff for less money.  I used about 1/3 of the jar for this.

You can not cook without a "kitchen"

The kitchen (our office break room) consists of cooking devices, cleaning devices, dishes and utensils, and random tools.

• Cooking devices: 

Toaster oven, on loan from an employee

The microwave

The bread maker, on loan from an employee

•  Cleaning devices:

A sink (critical for office cooking) and soap

Paper towels for cleaning messes

•  Dishes and utensils:

Plastic utensils, paper plates/bowls

Plastic and styrofoam cups

• Random tools (I donated some of this messy drawer):

To actually cook real food, however, the paper plates/bowls do not work.  I have my personal gear that I'm not sharing. ;)

• Personal cookware: 

Most of my cutting is done with a pocket knife.  Not the right tool for the job, but we don't have a real cutting board or any large surfaces to work on.  I donated a set of measuring cups and a slicing knife to the office, but I rarely use them -- only occasionally when making bread.


Given this collection of random tools, I have cooked many things at work (smelling up the place) that most people wouldn't think of cooking in an office environment.