Bread and Wine: Mango Chicken Curry

Some recipes lend themselves to metaphor more than others.

I was excited to make this recipe. It comes from the "Jazz and Curry" chapter of Bread and Wine. Curry has become one of my favorite dishes and I was thrilled to think that I could make it at home instead of shelling out so many dollars to my local Thai restaurant.

That was before I realized that this is INDIAN curry rather than Thai. 

Quite a bit different. 

That said, I was a little disappointed, and yet I think I learned more about myself wrestling through this one recipe than the others so far. And it has been a wrestle--from the  style of cooking, to having trouble keeping up with all of the ingredients, to actually having the TIME to make it, it's been a wrestle. 

But along the way I had the chance to confront some things about myself-- like my desire to NOT follow a recipe (see "my "Blueberry Crisp" entry on why I can't keep my cooking simple), my own carelessness combined with my desire for control. It got a little real up in here, but it was totally worth it. 

Dig in. Curry's on.

The Recipe: Mango Chicken Curry (adapted from Sally Sampson's The $50 Dinner Party)

Ingredients: Flour, curry powder, sea salt, cayenne pepper, chicken breasts, olive oil, garlic cloves, red onion, fresh ginger, bell pepper, chicken broth currants, roma tomatoes, mango, fresh lime juice, fresh cilantro, fresh basil

Niequist is right-- this isn't a very difficult recipe, but the number of ingredients is time consuming. And for me, mentally taxing. For a girl who loves a pinch of this, and a pinch of that, and a handful of this, and can barely follow a recipe to save her life, it took some effort to focus on all that needed to be included.

That said, it really is very tasty, and if you're new to Indian cuisine, not a bad introduction.

A definite bonus is that this recipe is gluten and dairy free, two good things for our household. Instead of white flour for searing the chicken, I took a cue from Niequist's notes and subbed brown rice flour without any difficulty. And when, after TWO trips to the store to get all of the ingredients I STILL could not remember to pick up fresh basil, I subbed dried without great loss. Fresh basil is infinitely superior of course, but dried works just fine in a pinch, or fit of exasperation.

Speaking of exasperation, let's talk about the cooking method for this recipe. Key word: SIMMERING.

This recipe requires it and it drove me NUTS the first time.

I don't know what you've picked up about me through this blog, but I'm not really a person who simmers. Especially since becoming a mother, I kind of tend to be a get'er done type--fold the laundry, put food plates for meals, clean the bathrooms (just make it happen), do the dishes becauseifyoudonottheywillformtheirownecosystem, etc.  But simmering, the business of letting ingredients do their thing while quietly cooking together while I don't do anything? THIS IS NOT MY JAM.

The first time I made the recipe I kind of hmmmed and hawed while skimming the recipes. Essentially this is what I read: "Chop a bunch of stuff, throw it in a pan, simmer together. Serve over rice."

I had not realized how utilitarian most of my cooking had become, with very little technique and mostly a lot of flash-fry, rolling boil type stuff. 

But this. THIS said to SIMMER.

There is essentially three levels to the cooking process in this recipe: In the first you coat the chicken with the flour mixture, brown,and set aside. Secondly, you take the chicken off the heat and cook the crisp vegetables until soft. Then the chicken and the rest of the ingredients are added, allowed to SIMMER, and then it is done.

Niequist does not tell you how long to simmer, only until the liquid is reduced by "one-fourth."

Huh? How long is THAT gonna take? It kind of threw me.

The first time I made this (I have made it three times at the time of this blog) I was wiped out at the end. It was nearing dinner time, or I had to run errands before dinner, and the business of watching the pot simmer while I did nothing about it baffled me. True, it was cooked, but it wasn't READY. There was no way to make it simmer more quickly. It simply had to take its time as it bubbled its way towards doneness. No added heat, no fussy stirring on my part, could hurry it towards doneness. 

In my frustration I went ahead and took it off the heat and set it aside so that I could turn off the stove and get on with my errands or whatever it was. But when serving time came I was kind of weirded out by the brothy, soup-like sauce I had made. It didn't taste great and it was awkward to eat, what with all of the rice floating around. My husband politely ate it, my kids not so politely refused it.  I was disappointed. A significant amount of time and ingredients had gone into making something not very appealing. 

I didn't realize that my threshold for dinner prep is around 15-20 minutes hands-on, thank you very much. 

I didn't realize that I make dinner, and really every meal, in such a hurry. 

I didn't realize how irritated SIMMERING would make me, that I am mostly all heat and sizzle and stir fry and rolling boil. 

Hurry, Hot. Fast, C'mon, Move it, Move it!

You guys. I learned that this recipe has to SIMMER.

The second time I made this, I read back through the recipe...carefully, minutely--and I figured out my non-simmering mistake. Time. The dish needed time to simmer.

For the uninitiated, what this means is that after doing relatively hot, quick work, you pour stuff together and you turn the heat to a mysterious level---kind of low, but not low, and not hot and not exactly medium heat because we all know how fast THAT heats up and makes everything boil out of the pot. No, you just have to kind of feel it somewhere between that medium and lowish heat and then watch as little heat bubbles rise in your pot, and some steam, and some mysterious thickness kind of starts happening, but then you WALK AWAY.

You go do some dishes or make the salad to go with it or water the plants outside, and than come back in and check on your pot.

It will not be done yet. It will be steaming and getting little bubbles maybe, or just releasing some delicious smells. But it is not done. It is time for you to go away again. 

You do this until you look at the edges of the pot and see how the sauce is a little lower than before, and looks a little thicker. You dip in a spoon and take a taste. Mmm. But it is not done yet. It's time to set the table and help the kids wash their hands and go potty and brush their hair and put on non-mudstained shirts.

THEN. 

IT HAS SIMMERED.

This is something like an hour. Maybe closer to two. But who knows? You just have to kind of go with it.

The sauce is thick now and ready for the final ingredients. The lime juice and herbs are added off-heat.

I feel like the message of simmering and time has been swirling around me lately:

Cooking. I need to slow down not only to simmer but to read the recipe correctly.

I've had flowers bloom on my porch days and even weeks AFTER I've stopped watering/fussing over them.

My kids, even as a little as they are, seem a bit happier on the days I give them more space in the day to do their own thing rather than be constantly hovered over and directed by mommy.

Simmer. That slow heat. The benefit of time. After the necessary ingredients and work are put in, it's the unfussing, the release of work and control to let something new take place. If that's not a metaphor, I don't know what is.

The next two times I made this recipe I respected the ingredient of time, giving it and myself more elbow room to let the pot comfortably simmer awhile after I had added all the necessary ingredients. I'd walk away, come back and visit, stir a little, check the edges, then force myself to walk away again. Not mind it. Just let it do it's thing.

Each time the results  have been better. This sauce is not a very thick one, but it gets beyond broth to a nice light sauce. You want a little texture to taste where the chicken meets the peppers meets the mango meets the herbs. 

As for tweaking the recipes, I always feel like with Eastern dishes I should be all subtlety, but honestly my husband and I just like more kick. So the next time I'll probably add more salt, more curry, another mango, and throw in a jalapeno just to see what happens. 

As for the kids, my 15 month old son loved this last go-round, making his signature "yumyumyum" sounds over his spoon. My daughter, well, I think curry isn't really her thing. That's fine. We have her try a bite, then make her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and we're all happy.

The Chapter: Jazz and Curry

Here Niequist describes curry (or any recipe, really) as jazz in our hands after we learn to follow a recipe. Recipes are the scales, the practice, the flat law, if you will of how to make something. Then once we have that down we can improvise, play with our ingredients, our styles, our moods, to make something new.

She cites culinary wisdom from French chef Thomas Keller of the French Laundry in Napa Valley:

Keller told [Food and Wine columnist Daniel Duane] to make the recipe once according to instructions. The second time, he told Duane to rewrite the recipe in his own terms, adjusting for his taste, cutting out or adding steps according to what made sense to him. The third time, Keller said to make it without any recipe at all, just by his memory and tastes and hands. And at that point, he said, 'The recipe is yours.'"

If you followed any of what I wrote above, I kind of threw that out to start with jazz and somehow work my way back to the basics (cooking is nothing if not a reveal of personality).

Even so, doesn't this show just how wonderfully human cooking is? I mean, if I let myself I can start thinking of cooking as such a thing-- a specialty pursuit along with learning Latin and synchronized swimming or something. It can be kind of elevated and taken out of everyday life sometimes.

But this gracious attitude--the learning, the adapting, the borrowing to make new, is such a picture of shared community and engagement. It's also a good cautionary tale for being too rigid. There are some absolutes that must be respected in cooking--yeast needs warmth and sugar to rise; oil prevents sticking, simmering takes time, etc. But the rest is so much to be played with. And that's to be embraced and enjoyed.

So whether you follow recipes that traditional way, or like me, have to go the long way around to find out the how and why of what works, cooking teaches us to put ourselves into our work, to literally bring ourselves to the table--even all the hot heat and rolling boil--so that maybe, gracefully, we can eventually learn to simmer.