EASIEST (10-MINUTE) CHICKEN OR FISH CURRY

In The Gourmet’s Recession Cookbook  in which I promised no dinner would cost more than a small pizza, I wrote about chicken tenders, “I’m not giving them up!”

 

  The chicken tender is a strip of pectoral muscle that runs along the inside of the breast, closest to the bone.  If there is a membrane left, a little white strip, cut it out carefully with a paring knife.  

  Allow 3 tenders per person.  If you are a single chef, it is an ultra-special treat.  James Beard wrote in his memoir, Delights & Prejudices, “Somehow I have never minded dining alone. Instead, I have always made it something of a ceremony.” He means, I think, in cooking for oneself, one is not only the cook but the shopper/meal planner, sommelier and diner.     

    3 chicken tenders per person

    1 cup coconut milk

    1 tablespoon curry powder

     ½ teaspoon kosher salt

1.      Quickly rinse the tenders in cold water.  Pat dry.

2.      In the skillet, mix the coconut milk, curry powder and salt. 

3.      Use low heat to bring to the point where bubbles start to appear. Slip the chicken in, cover the skillet and poach for 2 minutes. Turn and cook for about 3 more minutes. “Tender” means delicate and they need babysitting. The result should have a “silky” texture.

  For an Indian-style dinner, use quick-cooking couscous. The directions on the box are pretty good.  Boil one cup water, with  2 tablespoons olive oil and ½ teaspoon salt in a 1-quart saucepan.  Take the pot off the heat, cover it and steam for 5 minutes.  Fluff up with a fork.  I like to add 2 tablespoons lemon juice.  Makes about 2 cups couscous.

 

  If you’re up to it and have leftover couscous, make a salad by cutting a seeded tomato into small pieces and patted dry with paper towels, 2 tablespoons washed, dried and minced parsley or cilantro (I use scissors to do this,) Mix and add more oil and lemon juice to moisten the salad.  Add 1-2 green onions, sliced, the white part and the tender part of the green.  Re-salt to taste. 

For any left-over curry sauce, throw in about 4 or 5 sliced Crimini mushrooms, cover,  cook for about 5-minutes and serve on toast.

Photos by Carol Guilford

Excerpt from my "The Easiest Cookbook", hard cover, for curried fish.

  The Bluehaven Hotel was painted cotton-candy pink, bordered by turquoise sea and white sugar-spun sand, and set on a Caribbean island with zero restaurants.  One ate at ones hotel, or didn’t eat. We listened to the hot rhythms of the steel band and stared at our plates of lukewarm slices of roast pork, the thin gravy slowly  heading for the applesauce.  The catering, we found out, was in tune with the tastes of the guests, most of whom were British.

   Every now and then, during the next dreamlike days, shell searching along the shore or wandering back to our room at night, we caught a whiff of curry on the air—a mirage of scent, it seemed, since nothing resembling a spice had appeared on the hotel’s dining table.

   “The British like spices,” I whined.  The British East India Company practically owned Bombay in the seventeenth century.  Queen Victoria was crowned Empress of India in eighteen hundred seventy something...

    On our last afternoon, as we waited for the sunset, the smell of curry was unmistakably wafted along with the sea breeze.

     Determined to discover the source, we followed our noses toward a far side of the hotel, to a separate building hidden behind a green splash of thick foliage.  It was the kitchen where food was prepared for the hotel’s  help. 

     An Alice in Wonderland door opened, and we saw Tomas, his tall, starched white chef’s hat launched firmly on his black head.

     “Have you got the curry?” I asked, not meaning to sound frantic.

      “Ah, we are cooking de big fish my brother William caught on his boat.”

      That evening, our last, while the hotel’s other guests sipped consommé and cut into well-done roast lamb, a platter of curried fish was set before us.

       The room was suddenly scented with coriander and tumeric.  Heads turned, noses lifted toward the pungent smell.

      The steel band played.  We ate. When we profusely thanked Tomas, he said, “We are proud of our native cooking.”

        The next year we read of strife on the island.  The hotel was closed.

     

For “de fish curry” follow the recipe for chicken tenders, but instead slip in fish such as two thick fish fillets of cod or mahi-mahi or whatever looks good at the fish counter. Shrimp works, too.  If you use thin filet of sole or any other thin filets, cook only 2 minutes, turning the fish after 1 minute.

I like a cucumber salad with this.  Allow one peeled and diagonally sliced persian cucumber per person, 1 tablespoon vinegar, and a sprinkling of sugar, about ¼ teaspoon. Mix in a bowl large enough to hold and marinate the cukes.  Add salt to taste just before eating, as salt draws out the water and the cukes will seem to shrink before your eyes.