Cheating Cajun Curry Chicken (if a woodchuck could chuck wood)

Cajun Chicken Curry

I love alliteration. I also love curry. In the past I could probably be described as a curry ignoramous. I had no idea what went into it, how to eat it, and how many different kinds of curry there actually are out there.

The lovely Sharon however, has opened my eyes to the big wide world of curries that exist. She is personally an afficionado of Malaysian and Thai Green Curry, and makes a pretty decent Indian Curry too. She is at the point of having a specially concoted mixtures of herbs, spices, and chilli’s that she crafts in a seriously hot base. So needless to say my natural causcasian aversion to eating spicey foods has taken a back seat of late, and I am growing a new stomach lining to handle a bevvy of new taste sensations… and loving it too :)

So this was my attempt at getting in on the act… Albeit by making a curry I have no real idea about… but that’s never stopped me before…

The meal was actually inspired by a trip we took to Rickies (?) Cafe in Mt Lawley. It’s run by a West Indian guy from London, and they serve really down to earth West Indian/Jamaican style food (and you get free Johnny Cakes !). I ordered a really tasty curry chicken dish, and ever since I’ve thought about making it myself.

I do feel like a bit of a fraud though, because I haven’t gone and investigated how to make the cajun spice mix myself. I just happened to be in Fresh Provisions one day and came across a packet of “Cajun Spice Mix”, containing such exotic ingredients as “Pepper”, and “Mixed Spices”… So i decided to give it a go.

Ingredients

  • Chicken (i like breast (teehee), but apparently meat on the bone is better for curry)
  • Cajun Spices Mix (in lieu of actually making your own)
  • Few Potatos
  • One big onion (or two small onions… or 4 miniature onions)
  • 3 bullet chilli’s (tiny little ones that pack a punch)
  • Capsicum (i used some roasted stuff I needed to use up)
  • Sugar Snap Peas (again not exactly a cajun style ingredient, but had to use them up)
  • Raisans/Sultanas
  • Apple
Directions

Deceptively easy really. Cook it as you would any curry, which for me meant coating the chicken in the spice mixture, and rubbing it all with some olive oil (or ghee), then cutting up the chilli and frying it in some oil before adding the chicken to be browned. At the same time boil the potatos in a pot (actually sweet potato would go great in this too). Then adding the onion and getting it nice and soft, before adding the capsicum and anything else you want in there. When the potato is getting soft, add that into the mixture, and just before its done, drop in the sugar snap peas. I like these to be nice and crunchy for a bit of texture contrast.

And thats basically it. I tossed up whether I should use coconut milk or not, but opted out in the end, as I wanted to preserve the heat of the chilli… and the spice mixture I used seemed to have some kind of thickening agent in it already. I probably should have added coconut milk, because the spice mixture also had chilli in it already… So added to the 3 mega hot chillis I added, it was SPICEY ! But so very good.

Give it a try :) And if you have a good recipe for a DIY from scratch cajun/creole spice mixture, please let me know.

Cajun Chicken Curry

Poached Salmon on Scrambled Eggs

Poached Salmon & Scrambled Eggs

This is another in a series of faux spiceblog posts that I seem to keep arriving at. What can I say, the man is good.

So it lazy Saturday morning, but for once i wasn’t going to be satisfied with weetbix, toast, or even (shock horror) bacon and eggs. (Although that was mainly because I didn’t have any bacon).

Realising that I still had a lovely piece of salmon left over from last week, I remembered Anthony’s recipe and thought i’d give it a try.

It turned out really nice, and i did my normal routine of substituting in things I have for things I don’t, which always seems to work out ever so nicely.

Cherry/Grape Tomatoes are officially my favourite egg accompaniment.

Ingredients

  • 6 eggs
  • White wine vinegar
  • Salmon fillets
  • White wine
  • bay leaf
  • Pepper corns, and cracked peppercorns
  • Baby Spinach
  • Cherry Tomatoes
  • Slice Field/Button Mushrooms
  • Cream
Directions

This is really a very simple dish, and personally I think it’s hard to cook salmon badly (although a lot of restuarants seem to try).

I like it pretty pink on the inside, so it was just a case of poaching the fillet very slowly in the white wine with bay leaf and peppercorns.

Turn the heat right down so it doesnt bubble away furiously, and you’ll soon see it start to turn a darker shade of pink, and it should be cooked in about 5 minutes or so.

The scrambled eggs were dead simple too. Slice up your mushrooms and half the cherry tomatoes, then beat your eggs together with a tablespoon or two of cream (I used double cream as thats all that was on hand). Add a dash of white wine vinegar (not sure why but eggs seem to like it), and a healthy crackling of black pepper and some sea salt. You can add whatever you like to scrambled eggs of course… but these were basically what was left in the fridge on a Saturday morning before the weekly shopping routine.

Then get the scrambled eggs cooking in a hot pan, and just before they’re done, through in a good few handfuls of fresh baby spinach and let it wilt a little.

Then serve it up and lay your poached salmon fillet across the top. Add some more cracked pepper, and perhaps a great cup of coffee, and you have the makings of a great start to the day :)