What I Meant To Do

When I sat down here at the computer I meant to look up a chicken recipe that used fresh apricots. Then I got sidetracked when I was curious if Kathy has a new post.

But now I am back on track but disappointed, can not find what I wanted. So once again nutty Lanny is going out on a limb and inventing something. but I never record what I do. Today will be different. I am going to write it as I do it - weird doncha think?!

Proportions are going to coincide with what I got and what I wanna use. Changes, additions, deletions or editorial comments are in different type

Chicken - four large half frozen breast - but because it needs to stretch I am going to cut it up. Actually the package says it is ten servings - huh, more evidence that we just don't know portions.

Brown Jasmine rice already cooked with Kosher salt and toasted sesame oil - yum btw. I set it to cook before I went out weeding. Bet said it needed more water than a straight 1 rice 2 water ratio. She said it calls for 1 rice to 2.5 water. Well I think it is interesting that she and Dirt always have crunchy rice (not enough water) and when I follow their portions I come up with damp and very cooked rice. Hmmmm. I noted the rice here because I would have plated the dinner up with a ring of rice on the outside of the plate with the chicken in the center, had this been served at home.
More apricots than would actually be good so I'll use mmmmm, 4. Well that changed, I did use four but I pureed them and had Bet peel and halved the rest into the done sauce. Pureeing the apricots was very easy and if I had to do it all over again I think I would fore go peeling. Even dunking in boiling water the cots did not give up their peelings without a fight. Clearly I had modest cots. French onion soup - cause it's here and I am to lazy to make a broth from scratch. Okay no french onion soup because I am sharing this with lactose intolerant people. And bizarre of bizarre it contains milk, says so in big bold letters under the ingredient list. So now I gotta think creative.... After standing in the pantry for a minute this is the substitute I came up with.
Substitute, no that is an interesting concept cause you might say that this whole recipe is a substitute. If you can't make out the pic I grabbed the coconut milk which lead to the chili powder, coriander, cumin, and turmeric. The mushroom I grabbed for some depth, the onion and garlic are a given. Didn't use the entire garlic, but I should have.

Browned the chicken in my favorite pan after I sliced each breast lengthwise into about 5 strips each. Extra Virgin Olive Oil is the oil of choice only so as to not over do the sesame oil flavor which I already used in the rice. I was intending to put them in the rectangle pan shown in the pics but switched to the crock pot just in case using Sheila' s oven was not possible.

As the last pieces of chicken were browning I realized that I had a lot of fond, crusty brown bits (not burned), in the bottom of my pan and I wanted it in my sauce so I need to deglaze but I was thinking that the coconut milk wasn't going to do it. So back to the pantry.
I hadn't added ginger to my list of ingredients because I didn't have fresh ginger and for me ground ginger is used in my bathtub as needed and in my socks in the winter but not in my cooking. But I was looking around in the pantry sort of looking for wine that wasn't made by Dirt because somehow deglazing with a martini didn't appeal to me.

I came across an item that was bound to never be used, ginger soother, It was okay but because my family is a ginger (real ginger) ale drinkers to drink a ginger beverage that is not carbonated is too weird for words so there it was, waiting to be used as a deglazing liquid for a curry sauce that was about to not have any ginger in it. Yea!

Sorry that I don't have any more pics. I was under pressure to get done and if Dirt saw me taking pics he would have assumed, perhaps rightly, that I was unnecessarily holding up the show (getting out the door).

After I removed the chicken from the fry pan and put in the rectangle pan (crock pot, as I was not finishing the cooking at home) I tossed in my rough chopped onion and pressed garlic. Interesting that the onion sort of deglazed the pan.

But the ginger drink really took it up into a lovely sauce and cleaned that pan very nicely - who needs non stick when you can deglaze, make a lovely sauce and pre-clean the pan!

After the ginger drink, the spices - approx. 1 tsp each (should have been a little more) and approximately 1 TBS of my mushroom seasoning, steered clear of salt because some is in the mushroom seasoning and I wondered about it in the drink and or the chicken itself. Could have used a little after all.

Tossed in my four or five pureed cots. Cooked it down a little, wished I had had time to cook it down more to make sauce thicker.

Poured it over the chicken and then topped it with the cots halves.

It was good for a first time, off the cuff. With the changes noted it would be even better. Next time I won't have a ginger drink in my pantry instead I would have fresh ginger so I would deglaze with wine, even Dirt's if I had to. Its funny cooking shows are always making a big deal about not using a wine for cooking that you wouldn't drink. I drink wine (Dirt's) that I wouldn't cook with! Just kinda funny.

More seasoning, Its been a while since I've done a home made curry sauce, I think I left something or a couple of somethings out but nothing jumped out at me from the cupboard. I must be out of what ever it is.

Not only would I not have cooked it in the crock pot for as long as I did, I would added the halved cots at the last few minutes.


This was fun, lets do it again!