Monday, March 15, 2010

Curry... Of the Non-Tim Variety...

Got creative last night. Rather than yet another rendition of spaghetti and meatballs for Sunday night dinner, I stretched my culinary legs, so to speak:

Om nom nom

It's a generic curry chicken dish, a tame (by my standards) offering served over rice. The really killer about this one, though, is that it serves four - for less than 400 calories per serving. Here's the recipe:

1 lb boneless chicken, cubed

1 tablespoon cooking oil

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 cup chicken broth

1 cup sliced celery

½ red onion onion cut into thin wedges

1 cup chopped Golden Delicious apple

1 tablespoon cornstarch

And here's what you do with it:

Heat up a large saucepan. Put oil (I went with extra-virgin olive oil not because I have a crush on Rachel Ray but because I'm Italian and it's a law that we have a gallon tin of olive oil kicking around the house) in the pan, add curry, swirl around pan until well-coated.

Add chicken, cook over medium-high heat until browned. Add broth, celery, onion, and salt/pepper to taste. Bring to boil, then cover and reduce heat to simmer and stir occasionally for 15 minutes.

Add apple, stir, cover, let simmer another 5 minutes.

Mix cornstarch and water; add to pan and stir until sauce thickens. Simmer, covered, another 2-4 minutes.


Serve over rice and voila! For the maiden voyage, I stuck pretty faithfully to the recipe. My kids aren't exactly the most adventurous sorts in trying new culinary delights, so I didn't want to put them off with strong spices for the first try. BabyGirl G. took one look at it and refused to eat a bite (although she did clean all the apple and rice up eventually); TheBoy loved it, giving it a sold 3.5 out of 4. Quote of the night: "Daddy, this is my new favorite chicken dish!"

I took it as a matter of pride that there wasn't a spot left over - gonna have to double the recipe next time!

That is all.

5 comments:

EmmaPeel said...

Doesn't doubling the recipe defeat the 400 calories per serving since you wind up eating way more than you should? :) We've found that to be the case. I look forward to trying this out. We really ought to look at trading some low-fat heart healthy recipes.

Jay G said...

A good chunk of the calories is taken up by the rice - of that 1600 calories, literally half is rice. I'd double the chicken and veggie portion and add perhaps 800 calories total, which would bring the complete total to 2400, or 600 per serving for four servings.

The other thing is, leftovers are always good - especially with curry, where the flavor gets to really soak in.

Wolfman said...

That looks delicious, and I am going to try it out. Don't worry, if it goes in a cookbook I'll properly attribute it.

breda said...

I love that there's apple in it!

Borepatch said...

Om nom nom

HA!