Ingredients

• Vegetable oil, butter
• Chopped onion
• Partially cooked wheat berries
• Chopped apple, skin on is okay
• honey
• salt to taste
• boiling water

Method

• Seat of your pants

Source: video

Ingredients for the chicken

• 300 gms chicken breast boneless
• 1 tsp ginger paste
• 1 tsp garlic paste
• 1 tsp Kashmiri red chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp salt or to taste
• Oil to pan fry

Ingredients for gravy

• 500 gms roughly slit tomatoes
• 100 gms roughly cut onions
• 1 tbsp garlic paste
• 50 gms cashew
• 1 tsp kasoori methi
• 1/2 tsp garam masala
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp kashmiri chilli powder
• 5 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp cream
• 2 tbsp malt vinegar / 1.5 tbsp White Vinegar
• Salt to taste

Method

• Marinate the chicken with ginger paste, garlic paste, red chilli powder. Salt and keep it aside for 15 to 20 minutes.
• In a pan heat some oil, then fry the marinated chicken pieces in it. Once done place it into a bowl.
• In the same pan add onion, oil, a spoonful of butter. Once the onions are cooked, add tomatoes and cashews.
• Add some water and garlic paste, salt, malt vinegar, sugar, garam masala, and chilli powder. Evenly mix it and let it simmer for 15-20 minutes
• Churn the mixture into fine puree with a hand blender.
• Strain it back into the same pan. Make sure there is minimal wastage.
• Add butter, cream, chicken and kasoori meethi. Let it simmer for 5-7 minutes.
• Garnish it with cream and kasoori meethi.

2019-01-18: I tried the recipe for the first time, but didn't have all the ingredients. Here are my comments.

• I substitute Szeged paprika instead of Kashmiri chili.
• I used rice wine vinegar instead of malt vinegar.
• I didn't have garlic/ginger paste, so I substituted chopped garlic from a jar and ginger paste from a plastic container.
• I used curry powder instead of garam masala.
• Make sure to cut the chicken into thin chunks.

I like the result. It was rather more savory than the butter chicken I had the other day at Curry Corner.

I purchased this garam masala and tried it in a cabbage dish. Too much sweet spice, either anise or star anise. Skip it in the future.

I wanted to add some flavor to boiled broccoli. So what I did was take a small frying pan, add 4 oz. of cream cheese, 1 tsp of Mae Ploy green curry paste, and a bit of water, maybe 1/4 cup. I let it melt over a really low flame, occasionally stirring so that it would be smooth.

Once the broccoli was fork tender, I drained it, put it in a bowl, and added the curry/cream cheese sauce. Tossed it all together and ate it.

This rocked. The curry flavor was much more raw than when you fry it first or let it cook a long time in coconut milk, but I loved it.

Makes about 2 cups

Ingredients

• 14 ounces coconut milk
• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 lime, juiced
• 2 teaspoons sriracha
• 1 teaspoon salt

Mix everything in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-low heat. Reduce to simmer for 10 minutes.

Results

I really liked this dressing. It had a tiny bite to it that would probably be light enough for people not used to spicy foods. It is meant to be served over Thai chopped salad, but I served it over steamed cauliflower, which worked pretty well. It would also be a good sauce for a simple curried chicken dish. Probably wouldn't work with steamed brocolli, but it might with steamed cabbage.

Here's another variation:

• 14 ounces coconut milk
• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon Mae Ploy green curry paste
• 1/4 cup dried cranberries

2014-12-03: Now I have used this stuff as a condiment for steamed brocolli. It worked great. The curry I used in this case was a tablespoon of Mae Ploy green curry paste, a spice of the gods if there ever was one, and I added a quarter cup of dried cranberries in the cooking process, forgetting the other ingredients, which turned out to not be necessary when using Mae Ploy. Using that same version I have also used it as a dressing on a spinach only salad. It rocks. And then I drank it from a small bowl simply as a soup all by itself. Even that way it rocked.

Here's another variation:

• 14 ounces coconut milk
• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon Mae Ploy green curry paste

2014-12-13: You can't make a sauce much simpler than this.

I'm trying a second time to produce a sweet oat pilaf. By pilaf I simply mean a dish where the oats are neatly loose from one another instead of sticking together in a poridgy mass. I have read some buckwheat kasha recipes where the buckwheat was first mixed with beaten egg to coat the kernels and then heated in a frying pan with the goal of keeping them separate. That will be my approach this time. This would probably work better in the oven, but I'm currently in Russia with an oven that cannot be controlled precisely, so I'm going to work on the stove top.

• 2 cups whole oat groats
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 5 cups boiling water
• 4 small onions, coarsely chopped
• Vegetable oil, neutral tasting (not olive), enough to cover the bottom of the frying pan
• 4 medium cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• 1 tsp black pepper
• About a tsp of salt
• 1 banana, sliced
• 1/2 pound of golden brown (not yellow) raisins. This was really three handfuls; I have big hands.

Method

1. First I beat an egg. Mixed in 1 cup of oats. Mixed so that every grain was coated. Heated the mixture in a medium frying pan (with a heavy bottom) over lowish heat with the goal of cooking the egg and separating every single grain. By the time the first batch was done, the egg was leaving a residue in the bottom of the pan that was beginning to turn brown. I hate brown egg mass. Scrubbed out the pan. Repeated the process with the second cup of oats and the second egg. Scrubbed out the pan again.
2. Then I added the vegetable oil to the bottom of the pan and added the chopped onions. When they were approaching translucency, I added the garlic, then the curry powder, then pepper. Cooked briefly.
3. Added the boiling water. Added the oats. Roughly evened them out in the pan. Added the raisins. Added the bananas on top. Sprinkled with the salt. (Next time do the salt before the raisins and bananas.)
4. Covered the pan. Put the flame to the smallest level possible. Intended to let it cook for 50 minutes.

Now the processs of watching begins, since this is an experiment...

• 45 minutes into the process this stuff is smelling freakin' great.
• 50 minute check. Still smells freaking great. Water still remaining. Oats from the bottom of the pan already edible. Should have checked the oats on the side as well, but I didn't. Taste... can't tell yet, hard to say. I'll give it ten more minutes.
• 60 minute check. Side oats are also ready. Still too much water in the mess, so I'm removing the lid. Next time I'm thinking 4 cups of water might be sufficient.
• 70 minute check. Yup, 5 cups was too much. Next time four cups. For now I'll leave it be to get rid of more liquid. If that doesn't work, I'll eat it watery.
• 80 minute check. Still too watery, but I don't want to cook it anymore. I have turned off the flame and will let it simply vent to the air. We'll see what it is like in 20 minutes.

Results and commentary

• First off, in terms of keeping the grains separate this approach was a complete and total success. In fact, it was so successful that I'm wondering if my original premise was wrong. Maybe when using whole oats you don't have to worry so much about the grain turning into a goopy mass. Next time around I'll use only 4 cups of water.
• Flavor-wise this turned out great.
• I had worried that the dish would burn for a couple reasons. First off, oat porridge made with flakes burns easily if there is too little water. Secondly, the addition of banana makes it burn more easily. This time around there was no burning issue whatsover. When I use less water next time, I'll have to keep my eyes open more carefully just to make sure.
• Next time around I'll try to make a savory pilaf with some kind of meat.

I think that cooks avoid whole oats because they take a long time to cook. Now that I know how easy they are to cook, I won't avoid them in the future. The boiling water plus low flame approach worked great.

I liked my millet pilaf so much the other day that I decided to try the same thing with oats. Oats are harder to get to a pilaf texture.

• 4 small onions, coarsely chopped
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1 tbsp of curry powder
• Maybe a tsp of black pepper
• Some salt
• 1 sliced banana
• 1/2 pound of golden brown (not yellow) raisins
• 2 cups of oat flakes
• 5 cups of hot water

Grabbed a heavy frying pan, not one of those flimsy aluminum jobs. Something with a solid, thick bottom. Covered the bottom with sunflower oil. Poured in the oats. Very slowly heated, trying to coat every flake and slightly cook them. The purpose of this process was to try to end up with seperate flakes, not mush. Removed the flakes to a bowl after a while so I could continue using the same frying pan.

More oil. Soften the onions. Add the garlic, cook briefly till fragrant. Add the curry powder. Cook briefly. Add the oats, raisins, banana, hot water. Simmer.

Stir every 5 minutes to prevent the oats from sticking and burning on the bottom of the pan. Remove when oats are just past al dente.

In terms of getting separate flakes, this was a failure; I probably needed to cook them till they slightly changed color. In terms of flavor it was a complete success. Next time around I will try whole oats if I can find them, and probably use a couple of beaten eggs to see if if I can't get the groats to remain separate. That's a trick that Russians sometimes use with buckwheat kasha main dishes.

I made this in Kazan from stuff on the shelf. The last occupant left some millet groats, golden raisins and banana chips. Don't remember the last time I cooked millet. Still, if I can't make a decent curry-spiced pilaf out of that, then take away my chef's card!

• 4 small onions, coarsely chopped
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1 tbsp of curry powder
• Maybe a tsp of black pepper
• Some salt
• 1 cup of banana chips
• 1 cup of yellow raisins
• 2 cups of millet
• 5 cups of hot water

Softened the onions in olive oil. Added garlic, fried a moment. Added curry powder. Cooked a bit. Added millet, hot water, raisins, banana chips. Boiled a while. Tasted the liquid. Added pepper & salt. Boiled till the millet was about al dente.

I had wanted this to be a pilaf, and indeed the millet came out fine without being mushy. Not quite a pilaf, but still very tasty.

I liked how my previous curried cabbage came out, but I wanted to try a more savory version, prefereable with chicken broth. The problem is that chicken broth isn't sold here, so you have to make your own. Well, if I'm going to do that, I may as well use the meat as well. So I decided to just use ground chicken since the local farmer's market sells it. To my surprise, there were also some hot peppers at the market, so I grabbed those, too.

Ingredients

• 1/2 kilo of ground chicken
• 5 spicy green peppers, diced very coarsely
• 1/4 head of cabbage, chopped
• 2 large onions, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 5 tsp curry powder (Russian sized teaspoons)
• 1 tsp salt (American sized, guesstimated)
• Water

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2014-01-01: I made this again today, minus the chiles. Pretty good. This should become one of my standard recipes.

Method

Chicken and onions into the frying pan till the chicken is cooked and the onions are soft. Add the curry powder and garlic. Cook till fragrant, one or two minutes. Add everything else, including enough water to keep everything steaming and make some gravy. Cover. Stir occasionally.

Notes

This turned out good. I'll add it to the list of foods I make at home back in the States.

The ground chicken meat had essentially zero fat in it. Next time I'll add some oil and soften the onions first separately. The market said it was фарш из куриного филе, which may mean breast meat. Not real heavy on the chicken flavor. Maybe I should buy thighs instead.

Here's how the dish looked.

I'm in Russia, and I need to use up 3/4 of a head of cabbage before it goes bad. Several days ago I had bought some curry powder for this purpose, so here's what I threw together.

Ingredients

• 3/4 head of cabbage, chopped
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 heaping tablespoon of curry powder
• 1 tbsp of sugar
• water
• salt
• sunflower oil

I sauteed the onions in sunflower oil until soft. Added the curry powder, cooked it a minute. Added the garlic, cooked it a minute. Added the cabbage, mixed it all up, then added enough water to not quite cover the cabbage and let it simmer until the cabbage was soft. Added some salt. Tasted it. Kind of bland because I had only used water, not chicken broth. Hm. How can I make this better? So I added a tablespoon of sugar. Wow. Now I have a slightly sweet curried cabbage. Pretty tasty.

Adding some tomato paste wouldn't be a bad idea. Could probably leave the sugar out in that case.

I have yet to see chicken stock sold in Russia stores, but I was thinking this would turn out well if I took half a kilo of ground chicken, sauteed the onions with it, then did everything else minus the sugar. I bet that would turn out pretty good.

2016-01-30: Today I wanted to make curried cabbage again. This time it is a completely different approach.

Ingredients

• Vegetable oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 tbsp of Mae Ploy green curry paste (available at Asian markets)
• Water
• 1/2 head of cabbage, chopped

Method

1. Pour in almost enough vegetable oil to cover the bottom of the frying pan. Add onions. Saute till almost soft
2. Add garlic. Saute a minute or two.
3. Add curry paste. Saute a minute or two so the flavor infuses the oil.
4. Add enough water to slightly cover the bottom of the frying pan.
5. Add the cabbage. Cover. Stir every once in a while until soft.

This stuff rocked.