Nice chicken curry

This chicken curry turned out so nice I took pictures of it, and even took the time to write this blog post...

From Chicken Curry

The ingredients were somewhat made up on the spot. I started with Pataks Mild Curry paste, which is tasty, but unfortunately it is mostly oil and salt. Still, I was hungry, and it has a good bunch of spices and herbs in it too.

Then I added some left over tomato sauce from Saturday, which was home made and salt free. This was cherry tomatoes (canned, but no added salt), onions, garlic and some Italian herbs.

The curry paste went into a pint jug with the tomato sauce, 1/2 a pint of chicken stock, some red wine, salt and pepper.

I fried up chicken breasts, and at the same time put some diced potatoes on to boil, and started up the rice.

After about 8 mins, the chicken was cooked and I threw some broccoli florets in with the potatoes.

Then I drained the broccoli and the potatoes and threw them in with the chicken, and poured the pint jug of good stuff over it all and stirred it all up.

Simmered for about 10 minutes, and then ate.

It would have been nice with some nan bread, but you can't have everything.

Science world

Corbey, Jamie and I went to Science World on Sunday to check out the new Fossils, Fins and Fangs exhibit. Really we just went to see the full size cast of a t-rex and genuine fossilised triceratops head.

Science World Fall 2008

We also checked out a movie at the Omnimax theatre there, called Journey into Amazing Caves. Really it's about a couple of amazing women, that climb and raft to the most inaccessible caves in the world to take biological samples.

See a clip here. Omnimax Theatre

Justin's Pumpkin Soup

Making pumpkin soup has become a tradition for me over the years. This is how I made it this year. It was a good year!

There are some rules for making Justin's Pumpkin Soup.

• It has to have pumpkin in it
• No salt, no sugar, no modified or processed crap
  
• Everything has to be fresh (ground spices are okay)

From Pumpkin soup 2008

Ingredients

1lb Pumpkin, diced
2-3 Medium Onions
3 Large Carrots
6-8 Medium Potatoes, peeled and quartered
1/2 a red pepper in questionable condition
1/2 a garlic thinly sliced
1/2 large ginger root, shaven into ribbons then chopped a bit
Few drops of lemon juice
1pt Chicken stock
1/2 cup white wine (cooking)
1/2 a green chilli (chopped finely) (more next year, this wasn't enough)
Glob of honey (a fairly generous glob)
Freshly ground Black pepper

From Pumpkin soup 2008

Method

Half fill a large pot (at least a quart pot) with hot water, and add a pint or more of chicken/ vegetable stock. If you don't have real chicken stock then OXO or something is allowed. This breaks one of my rules doesn't it? But that's okay.

Bring the water to a boil then you chop everything up, and put it in the pot.

I usually simmer it for about 35-45 minutes. It's probably better to start with the stuff that wants to be cooked longer, like potatoes and carrots, but this year I didn't bother doing that and it was fine.

Erm. Well that's really it!

We eat it with a french baguette or something similar. Corbey, my wife, has cheese in it. Processed cheese at that. This is tolerated.