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For those of you who knew me through my undergrad, I never found joy in cooking.  After I ditched the meal plan at FSU mid-freshman year, I didn’t have a kitchen and found the microwave to be my savior for cooking.  Mmmm…just thinking of Hot Pockets, Easy Mac, and Chef Boyardee brings me back.  Starting my sophomore year, I had an apartment and a REAL kitchen!  I could use the stove to make spaghetti and the oven for frozen pizzas.  Julia Child was jealous, I’m sure.  Nothing much changed the rest of undergrad.  I usually took advantage of those expensive frozen stir fry dinners, bagged salads, and other prepared dished that were easy and quick to make.   Oh, and I ate out a lot!

Then I came to Milwaukee for grad school.  My roommate was nice enough to teach me how to make an omelet and scrambled eggs.  It’s true, I had never made  eggs before this point in my life.  That was at least a start, and the next year I made even more of practical use of the kitchen, but never cooked anything really substantial.  So now, I’m out of school, poor, and have a lot of free time to be interested in things other than music.  I really shouldn’t be eating out as much and I should be eating more healthy anyway.

This brings me to the all the fun I had the other night with figuring out how to make coconut curry chicken.  I love Asian food and this is my favorite dish.  I researched and found two recipes online: one for the curry preparation and one for the rice. (Click on highlighted words for the recipe).  A note about the rice prep:  I found that I had no idea how to make rice that wasn’t mushy or undercooked, and so this recipe helps to make really sticky white rice.

This whole experiment took about 2.5 hours.  This is because I didn’t multi-task on anything since I was trying this out for the first time.  It took me an hour just to rinse the rice, drain it and let it sit, and then soak it.  After the wait, all it took for the rice was the right amount of time for boiling, and simmering.  As for the curry prep, I used all of the ingredients in the recipe.  I used the “Patak’s” brand for the curry sauce and used their Korma type which is a mild curry.  I also added some ground ginger and cayenne pepper, which added to the overall flavor.  I neglected to use the potatoes because I couldn’t find a peeler…oops.  Then I chopped up a boneless skinless chicken breast, a green bell pepper, and an onion.  This was fun because I have no idea how to chop a bell pepper or onion, which was cause for watery eyes.  Anyway, I sauteed the chicken, added the veggies, and then the sauce.  I put it together with the rice, and Voilà!  Amazingness!  Add to that  a glass of Semi-Dry Riesling from Old Oak Cellars, a local winery, and the dinner was awesome.

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