Indian Chicken Curry

I know you wait patiently for those cupcakes to be covered in frosting, but I think you should eat some dinner first. Enjoy a trip into my not-so-distant past.

My fourth year in grad school, my roommate K and I moved across town to the west side. Close to K’s new job, right on the bus line and minutes from the gym. The most important thing about our new place turned out to be its proximity to Swagat. Unknown to us, we had moved across the street from one of the best Indian restaurants in Madison. Day after day, I would ride the bus home from the lab and be greeted with amazing smells, floating on the wind, emanating from the restaurant.


For weeks I allowed Swagat to sit quietly on the corner, until one evening we got together with some friends for dinner. The décor was understated, to say the least. Small tables covered in white linens with a single candle in the center. An unused buffet sat in the corner of the space and paper hearts hung from the ceiling (which seemed unusual since it was October). The menu was expansive, featuring choices from both the North and South of India. The only problem was; I had never eaten at an Indian restaurant. Here I am, twenty-three years old, and a curry virgin!

Browsing through the menu I settled on their chicken curry. Start simple, that was the plan. My friends also decided to get an order of cheese naan. Our quiet and polite waiter took our order and brought back these wafer thin crackers with a trio of sauces; sweet, mint and mango (I quickly became a big fan of the mystery purple sauce). The freshly baked cheese naan also went well with the sauces. The cheese naan is quite simply cheese-filled flatbread baked in a tandoori oven. Oh yeah, and it’s fantastic. Stop reading now, go find yourself an Indian restaurant, and order yourself some. I’ll wait.

Okay, now that you’ve got some cheese naan we can continue. Onto the main course, my chicken curry. Our waiter brought out heaping bowls of rice and our dinners. Each bowl of curry, masala and vindaloo came in a little golden bowl, placed atop a flame. Adorable. And fantastic. I couldn’t believe that it took me so long to try Swagat. The curry was sweet and spicy, bright and delicious.

Over the next two years I frequented Swagat more often than I can remember. I’m fairly certain I tried everything in their chicken section of the menu. In fact, if it had not been for Swagat, I would have starved while writing my thesis. During the middle of a particularly fierce snowstorm I actually walked there for dinner (I could see the OPEN sign from my bedroom window). I still dream about their vegetable pakoras and cheese naan.

After leaving Madison I was left in a curry slump, until I discovered Pensey’s Maharaja curry powder. Now my curry powder and I can live happily ever after. Just a word of warning, proper ventilation in necessary when cooking curry in an apartment, I recommend cooking curry in the summer months.

Chicken Curry

1 medium yellow onion, diced
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
Fresh ginger, 2 inch segment, cut into matchsticks
1.25 lbs chicken breast, cut into cubes
2 tsp Curry powder of your choice (Pensey’s has several good ones to choose from)
3 peppers, chopped (I like to use a variety of colors, because it’s pretty)
1 tsp salt
¾ cup coconut milk
2 roma tomatoes, cored and diced

- Heat a pan to medium-high heat and cook onion and garlic in a little bit of oil until lightly browned (3-5 minutes)
- Add chicken and curry powder and allow chicken to brown on all sides (5 minutes)
- Add peppers and cover with lid for 3-5 minutes
- Add salt and coconut milk and allow to come to a boil. Lower the heat to medium and simmer until chicken is cooked thru (5-7 minutes)
- Remove chicken pieces into another bowl and add tomatoes. Allow to bubble for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- The sauce will be slightly thicker and you should add the chicken back to the pan
- Serve over rice and enjoy!

And be sure to go get yourself some cheese naan, because unless you have a tandoori oven, it’s not the same. (Although I’ve found some at Wegmans that is pretty darned close)

Chocolate Cupcakes (High altitude recipe included)

Baking at high altitude makes me sad. A born and bred sea-level baker, living at 5,000 feet for the past two years has been a struggle. So much that I had given up on baking cakes, cookies and other delicious treats until I returned to a more friendly altitude. However, with only three weeks left living in the mountains, I decided to finally conquer this problem. Chocolate cupcakes looked like the best choice to help use up my remaining baking supplies. Besides, chocolate cupcakes are delicious.

Attempt 1…
Having success in the past with Elinor Klivanis’s cookbook “Cupcakes!” I decided to make her Chocolate sour cream cupcakes. This particular recipe has previously produced moist, light cupcakes. Following the recipe line-for-line, I came up with a fluffy batter that tasted pretty good!

1/3 of a cup of batter went into each muffin cup and into the oven it went for 20 minutes. Well, more like 11 minutes. Around this point I had the following thought pop into my head, “is something burning?”

To properly set up what I was confronted with, try to think of me in one of your favorite old TGIF sitcoms. Perhaps Steve Urkel and I had decided to make some cupcakes for a class project. Now knowing our friend Steve, he added some super yeast to the batter and inevitably, hilarity ensues.

Opening up the oven, I find an ever-growing mass of chocolate cupcake batter. Bubbling up, spilling over the edges of the pan and landing on the bottom of the stove (right on the heating element, hence the burning smell). Staring at this mass of brown ooze I stop to wonder, “how can it keep growing like that?” It's like a cupcake volcano.

With a bottle of Clorox Clean-up and a spatula, I end attempt number one.

Attempt 2…
This cupcake recipe will not beat me! I will succeed and make delicious, tasty chocolate cupcakes! Being a girl of the modern age, I know just where to find the solution to my cupcake problem, the internet. The problem with living in the mountains is two-fold. 1. At higher elevations, there is less air pressure, and thus your baked goods tend to rise much quicker than desired. 2. The climate is also a lot drier, which often leads to drier cakes and crumbly cookies.

Upon reading many high-altitude recipes, you realize there is a trend. Decrease the leavening to allow for a slower rise and increase the flour to give more structure. Most recipes also call for a slight decrease in sugar. This is just a general trend, every recipe seems to have different tweaks to make the 5,000 foot climb.

Armed with this knowledge I ventured back into the kitchen. Increasing the flour by 1 tbsp, decreasing the leavening by half and decreasing the sugar by 2 tbsp… I came up with a similar looking batter. Confident with my alterations I added 1/3 cup batter to the cupcake liners and into the oven they went. They started off with a nice rise, until about 10 minutes in. At this point they overflowed their cups and flattened out. Thankfully there was no repeat of my sitcom attempt 1, the batter remained contained to the top of the muffin pan.

While delicious, they look like Franken-cupcakes. Not suitable for frosting, but totally suitable for eating with some ice cream!

Attempt 3…

One final go at these cupcakes.

From the last batch, I could tell that the flavor was on, they were just too big! I also decided to use full fat sour cream, to give them a bit more structure. With one final adjustment, the cupcakes went into the oven, this time with just ¼ cup batter in each cup. Fingers crossed!

So far, so good!

Sweet success at last!

Stayed tuned for frosting!!!

Recipe
From Elinor Klivanis’s “Cupcakes!”
Adaptations for High Elevation in red

3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 cup (plus 1 tbsp) flour
½ tsp (¼ tsp) baking soda
½ tsp (¼ tsp) baking powder
¼ tsp salt
½ cup butter
1 ¼ cup (minus 2 tsbp) sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ sour cream (full fat)
½ cup water

Melt the chocolate (either in a double boiler, or in the microwave at half power). Set aside to cool slightly.

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl.

Mix together sugar and butter until creamy. On low speed, mix in melted chocolate. On medium speed, add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and mix until combined and batter is slightly lighter in color. Add sour cream and mix until combined.

Add half the flour, mixing on low speed (I chose to do this by hand), followed by the water and finishing with the remaining flour.

Fill the paper muffin liners with ¼ cup of batter and bake for 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the pan on a wire rack. Remove and allow to cool completely before frosting.

The beginning

The question remains, how to begin? While much thought has been done on the recipes I want to shore, the stories I would like to relay, the beginning remains a little fuzzy.

I suppose 'why' is the important question to answer, rather than 'how.' Why start a food blog? While there are many reasons (love of cooking, a ridiculous cookbook collection to be delved into, a need to feed myself) the most important reason is you.

Welcome to my kitchen. Let the fun begin!