When the Mad Professor cooks, recipes are irrelevant. I haven't done it in a while but now it's time.
I haven't found much in the way of spices so far but I've got some curry powder, some ground red chilies and some oregano. That's kind of sparse but my theory is that I'll start with a tomato paste as a base and zing that up with the curry powder and the chili powder plus might as well throw in some oregano as that's always good on practically anything.
Once the curry cooking sauce is ready, I'll get things started with olive oil, onions and garlic. There's no point in starting anything without those. First thing is to stir fry that until the onions are nicely softened. I'm sure there's a perfect cooking term for that but the Mad Professor doesn't care about cooking terms. It just has to taste good.
Once the stir fry base is ready, the curry sauce gets stirred into it, that will be followed by the vegetables as the chicken, which was browned ahead of this, is stirred in last because it needs the least cook time.
The reason for writing this down is that I've got three chicken breasts and the question I pose to the Mad Professor is whether to do all three of them. Saving two means they may go to pot in the fridge but using all three means a possible loss of all three if this really sucks. Mad Professor cooking is serious business.
The tactical considerations are weighty and far-ranging as there's no wok and there's only one frying pan, a seriously small one. There's no way all this stuff will fit into it. Therefore, perhaps the answer, heretical as it may be, is to switch from stir-frying to slow-cooking this stuff, take a bit longer but give that chicken more time to absorb that curry goodness.
Yep, slow cooking is going to be the winner. If you don't see another blog article from me, you will know that something went horribly wrong.
If it does work, you'll hear about the Mad Professor's Wild Ride to the Supermarket earlier today. It was hilarious ... in a twisted kind of way.
Update:
Verdict is a single word: Pitiful. To shed that much blood for this boring result is most unfortunate. I use a quite sharp knife for cutting the chicken and it just managed a little nick on my thumb but it was ridiculous how much blood flowed and it wouldn't stop. This isn't an Emergency Room story, it really is ridiculous how it kept flowing and I couldn't just abandon the project so I wrapped it up as best I could but even that leaked and there was blood all over every damn thing.
So, after that damn nuisance, I figured I had seriously paid my dues for the meal but it turned out boring. All the ingredients turned out well, the rice was right, the chicken was nicely tender, the vegetables weren't squishy, etc. But! None of them picked up too much of what I had hoped would be a fairly wicked base!
This isn't a whine. I'm really surprised! I thought I had quite a good jolt in the curry powder and the same for the chilies but neither came through very well at all. I'll review my mix for next time as I'll definitely take another shot at this. However, there's one basic rule to Mad Professor cooking: if you cook it, you eat it. So I'm doing that now and I saved the rest. Hardly anything gets thrown out of this kitchen except wrappers and shells!
I haven't found much in the way of spices so far but I've got some curry powder, some ground red chilies and some oregano. That's kind of sparse but my theory is that I'll start with a tomato paste as a base and zing that up with the curry powder and the chili powder plus might as well throw in some oregano as that's always good on practically anything.
Once the curry cooking sauce is ready, I'll get things started with olive oil, onions and garlic. There's no point in starting anything without those. First thing is to stir fry that until the onions are nicely softened. I'm sure there's a perfect cooking term for that but the Mad Professor doesn't care about cooking terms. It just has to taste good.
Once the stir fry base is ready, the curry sauce gets stirred into it, that will be followed by the vegetables as the chicken, which was browned ahead of this, is stirred in last because it needs the least cook time.
The reason for writing this down is that I've got three chicken breasts and the question I pose to the Mad Professor is whether to do all three of them. Saving two means they may go to pot in the fridge but using all three means a possible loss of all three if this really sucks. Mad Professor cooking is serious business.
The tactical considerations are weighty and far-ranging as there's no wok and there's only one frying pan, a seriously small one. There's no way all this stuff will fit into it. Therefore, perhaps the answer, heretical as it may be, is to switch from stir-frying to slow-cooking this stuff, take a bit longer but give that chicken more time to absorb that curry goodness.
Yep, slow cooking is going to be the winner. If you don't see another blog article from me, you will know that something went horribly wrong.
If it does work, you'll hear about the Mad Professor's Wild Ride to the Supermarket earlier today. It was hilarious ... in a twisted kind of way.
Update:
Verdict is a single word: Pitiful. To shed that much blood for this boring result is most unfortunate. I use a quite sharp knife for cutting the chicken and it just managed a little nick on my thumb but it was ridiculous how much blood flowed and it wouldn't stop. This isn't an Emergency Room story, it really is ridiculous how it kept flowing and I couldn't just abandon the project so I wrapped it up as best I could but even that leaked and there was blood all over every damn thing.
So, after that damn nuisance, I figured I had seriously paid my dues for the meal but it turned out boring. All the ingredients turned out well, the rice was right, the chicken was nicely tender, the vegetables weren't squishy, etc. But! None of them picked up too much of what I had hoped would be a fairly wicked base!
This isn't a whine. I'm really surprised! I thought I had quite a good jolt in the curry powder and the same for the chilies but neither came through very well at all. I'll review my mix for next time as I'll definitely take another shot at this. However, there's one basic rule to Mad Professor cooking: if you cook it, you eat it. So I'm doing that now and I saved the rest. Hardly anything gets thrown out of this kitchen except wrappers and shells!
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