Chicken Curry with Gentle Spices, Moghlai Spinach with Browned Shallots & Cucumber Mint Raita

Picture me, gently punching myself in the arm with pride à la Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club. I rarely wow myself in the kitchen, and do it even more rarely after several nights of poor sleep, but tonight’s dinner was impressive, delicious and remarkably easy, considering how many dishes I made. Actually, I should say considering how many dishes we made, because Sophia actually helped to prepare almost all of this meal.

After quickly re-shelving Alice Waters, I went back to The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper. I’ve wanted to try their chicken curry since I got the book last year, but was intimidated for no reason other than the fact that it’s curry. The ingredient list isn’t unreasonably long and the recipe doesn’t involve a lot of steps. This week our family is on spring break, so Ben’s been doing most of the hands-on baby stuff while Sophia and I have adventures. This leaves extra time for tackling new recipes, so tackle we did.

For this recipe, you make your own curry paste in the Cuisinart, then sauté it for about 10 minutes before adding whole milk yogurt and reducing it further. I’ve never made curry paste before, and the process was incredibly simple. Just throw in big chunks of onion, garlic, fresh ginger, spices, tomatoes and jalapeño, puree, and you’ve got curry paste!

I was a little worried about how hot it would be as the curry paste sautéed, because the steam wafting above my Le Creuset smelled spicy, mostly of jalapeño. However, the process of really reducing the paste down with yogurt resulted in a curry sauce that was thick and rich with a warm, well-rounded flavor without being hot. Once the sauce had been reduced, I added more yogurt and organic boneless, skinless chicken thighs. The only change I made to the recipe was to add a few cubed, cooked Yukon gold potatoes right at the end. I used slightly less chicken than the recipe called for, and the potatoes stretched the dish quite a bit and were a wonderful vehicle for the curry sauce.

Because the curry doesn’t really have any vegetables in it, I also made Moghlai spinach with browned shallots, from Madhur Jaffrey’s Simple Indian Cookery. Indian is absolutely one of my favorite types of cuisine, particularly in restaurants, but always seems expensive for essentially comfort food. (I have fond memories of watching Sophia devour saag paneer before she was one).

In making this recipe, I omitted the hot dried red chilies and used prewashed baby spinach, significantly cutting down on the labor. The browned shallots and garam masala add so much flavor to the wilted spinach, and four tablespoons of cream at the end make the dish rich without being heavy. A perfect accompaniment.

Lastly, we made cucumber mint raita, also from Simple Indian Cookery. Oddly, I abhor yogurt but love raita. Jaffrey’s raita comes together in less than 10 minutes and provides a nice balance to the medium spice of the curry. All of this was served over fragrant jasmine rice (because I didn’t have basmati on hand).

A last-minute call to Eryc, who was joining us for dinner, and we also got to enjoy an Indian lager called Kingfisher with our meal. I didn’t realize there was such a thing, and certainly not available in Longmont! We must really be coming into our own here.

Everyone (Sophia included) had seconds, and this definitely goes down as my most successful attempt at homemade Indian food. Next time, if I’m feeling extremely brave, we may try to add parathas, a cumin-flavored Indian flatbread.