I don't have kitchen disasters very often. I'm a reasonable basic cook, I'm usually quite careful with checking recipes and where I decide to try something new it's usually because it sounds like something I can do. I won't be on Masterchef any time soon (because I'd cackle insanely and set fire to everything if I was allowed a blowtorch, for one) but things usually work out pretty much as they are supposed to, turmeric dyeing aside. Not so much this evening.
In my planning, I decided to try something completely new - Chicken, Pistachio and Black Pepper Curry, from my most recent Sabrina Ghayour acquisition Feasts. As is perhaps obvious from some of my earlier posts, I really like her other books and this recipe looked good so whilst I have a bit more time to experiment with cooking I thought I'd give it a go. We did a trip to the big supermarket so got all the slightly less common ingredients, I read through the recipe earlier in the day (an advantage of working from home) and thought I'd worked out how to fit the 90 minute cooking time in with the prep time and the rest of my day. So far, so good but sadly it has not been an unqualified success.
Firstly, the recipe includes raw, shelled pistachios (100g), which we couldn't find in the shops. Although I can't complain too much that my husband also returned with salted, roasted ones because he wasn't sure which ones were required as I love them. Shelling 200g of pistachios does get you 100g, but it takes ages - flaw one in my plan. I did quite a lot of them at lunchtime, but the remaining few took longer than I expected.
The recipe tells you to start by roughly chopping two onions and softening them before adding 800g of chicken thigh fillets and 2 tbsp black pepper. Do not do this. Instead, make the paste first because it's a horror show, or at least it was for me.
To make the paste, put your 100g of shelled pistachios, 50g fresh coriander, 2 red chillies, 5 cloves of garlic, a peeled and roughly chopped thumb of ginger and the seeds from 6 cardamom pods into the blender. The recipe says to cover this with water and blend to a smooth paste, so that's what I did - I even measured out how much water seemed about right for future reference. When I turned on the blender, water immediately sprayed everywhere to the extent I thought I'd not put the lid on properly (or I'd broken it). I checked it over in a panic, discovered it was fine and decided to reduce the amount in the blender and do it gradually. Once the first batch was slightly more paste like I added the rest, including all the water. This time the blender spat sludgy green water everywhere. I drained out a fair bit of the water and re-blended it all, then went and got a Drink (sloe gin and ginger beer) before moving on to the next stage.
The next stage was the book's stage one - cook the onions, add the chicken and pepper and seal the chicken. Add the paste and a little water to top it up. Bonus tip, when adding the water, use it to swirl out the food processor first as it will serve a cunning dual purpose of cleaning as well as loosening up the mixture. Season well with salt, bring to the boil and then leave to simmer over a low heat for an hour. Don't do this next bit either. As I started tidying up, I thought how strange it was that I hadn't had to put any garlic in and looked again at the recipe. I'd forgotten the garlic so had to panic crush and add it. This recipe is cursed.
After an hour, add 300 of chopped butternut squash and 150g baby sweetcorn, then leave to cook for another 30 minutes. I used frozen squash, so added it a little earlier. My good intentions of doing my language class homework whilst this cooks went out the window as it took a while to tidy up the green sludgy water disaster and then I was drinking gin and faffing.
Serve with rice - these amounts serve 6, so we ended up with plenty of leftovers (which was the plan). Mercifully, after all that, it was nice.
In my planning, I decided to try something completely new - Chicken, Pistachio and Black Pepper Curry, from my most recent Sabrina Ghayour acquisition Feasts. As is perhaps obvious from some of my earlier posts, I really like her other books and this recipe looked good so whilst I have a bit more time to experiment with cooking I thought I'd give it a go. We did a trip to the big supermarket so got all the slightly less common ingredients, I read through the recipe earlier in the day (an advantage of working from home) and thought I'd worked out how to fit the 90 minute cooking time in with the prep time and the rest of my day. So far, so good but sadly it has not been an unqualified success.
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| They look so pretty at this stage |
The recipe tells you to start by roughly chopping two onions and softening them before adding 800g of chicken thigh fillets and 2 tbsp black pepper. Do not do this. Instead, make the paste first because it's a horror show, or at least it was for me.
To make the paste, put your 100g of shelled pistachios, 50g fresh coriander, 2 red chillies, 5 cloves of garlic, a peeled and roughly chopped thumb of ginger and the seeds from 6 cardamom pods into the blender. The recipe says to cover this with water and blend to a smooth paste, so that's what I did - I even measured out how much water seemed about right for future reference. When I turned on the blender, water immediately sprayed everywhere to the extent I thought I'd not put the lid on properly (or I'd broken it). I checked it over in a panic, discovered it was fine and decided to reduce the amount in the blender and do it gradually. Once the first batch was slightly more paste like I added the rest, including all the water. This time the blender spat sludgy green water everywhere. I drained out a fair bit of the water and re-blended it all, then went and got a Drink (sloe gin and ginger beer) before moving on to the next stage.
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| The Hell Paste |
The next stage was the book's stage one - cook the onions, add the chicken and pepper and seal the chicken. Add the paste and a little water to top it up. Bonus tip, when adding the water, use it to swirl out the food processor first as it will serve a cunning dual purpose of cleaning as well as loosening up the mixture. Season well with salt, bring to the boil and then leave to simmer over a low heat for an hour. Don't do this next bit either. As I started tidying up, I thought how strange it was that I hadn't had to put any garlic in and looked again at the recipe. I'd forgotten the garlic so had to panic crush and add it. This recipe is cursed.
After an hour, add 300 of chopped butternut squash and 150g baby sweetcorn, then leave to cook for another 30 minutes. I used frozen squash, so added it a little earlier. My good intentions of doing my language class homework whilst this cooks went out the window as it took a while to tidy up the green sludgy water disaster and then I was drinking gin and faffing.
Serve with rice - these amounts serve 6, so we ended up with plenty of leftovers (which was the plan). Mercifully, after all that, it was nice.
Hollow laughter here - apart from not owning that particular book it all sounds eerily familiar.
ReplyDeleteThe hellpaste flavourings sound glorious though. Out of interest, how many cardamom seeds do you get in a pod, roughly? I have seeds sans pod...
It looked like 5 or 6. The cardamom wasn't very strong, so I think it could take more if you like cardamom! It was genuinely very nice, once the hellpaste was made.
DeleteOh god. This sounds extremely painful. I was on edge till I knew the end product was edible. At least you've Learned from this. But I can imagine this isn't going on your staples list.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a Learned From This recipe, but worth making. Not any time soon though.
DeleteI'm so glad it was edible at the end of all that I was fearing you saying it wasn't worth it!!
ReplyDelete