Jamaican Me Curry, Mon

Keeping with the theme of fall colors, here's a pretty simple Jamaican Chicken/Potato Curry. Something tells me they don't have fall in Jamaica, but if they did, this would be perfect.

I've made different types of curries before that have turned out good, but not that good. This one is currazy good, simple, and doesn't take much effort at all. I always get scared when I see a website mention a recipe as a "weeknight dinner", envisioning a child running out of my cabinet at any moment asking when dinner is on the table. Future he/she probably won't eat this anyways, so I will be reduced to eating kraft mac and cheese. Curry mac? Man can dream. Thankfully, I'm not there yet, so weeknight dinner usually means "something with leftovers so I don't have to buy lunch/dinner the next day". So ya, I'd call this a good "weeknight dinner".

What you need:

- 1 Lb Chicken thighs or breasts, whatever you're into. Thighs have more flavor/more fat. So obviously go for the thighs if you're on the fence.
- A couple potatoes. Slice em up on the smaller side.
- 1 onion
- 1 green pepper
- 1 spicy pepper. I used a habanero and this shit was HOT. Typical Jamaican would call for Scotch Bonnet pepper, but when we ain't in Jamaica we make due with what we got.
- A few cloves of garlic
- A small piece piece of ginger. Take the skin off, dice up.
- 1 can regular coconut milk
- 1 cup of chicken broth
- a few drops of rice vinegar. If you don't have this, get some. It's a good thing to have any time you make a marinade,  but only if you're into that kind of thing, think you might like to be into that kind of thing, or just like the thought of something "marinating". It does sound lovely.
- Hot sauce




















Seasoning:
- 3 - 4 Tbsp. Curry Powder. There are tons of curry powders out there, so you can easily get lost. Every country just HAD to come up with their own version of a curry spice. I love them for it, but my cabinet does not. For this recipe, you want a yellow curry powder. One with the word "Jamaican" in it would be ideal, but you may not find that. Try. If not, a Thai version will probably work fine.


So here's the deal. Slice up the garlic, onions, ginger, throw it in a pot with some olive oil heating. Take a chill pill and LET THIS MIXTURE GET NICE.

When the onions are lookin' nice, add in green pepper, spicy pepper, and curry powder. Use plenty of curry powder as it is the showstopper of this dish.

 After a minute of the curry powder cooking, and your kitchen smelling AMAZE, throw in your chicken. Now we're getting nice.

After about 5-7 minutes with the chicken cooking, throw in the potatoes. After another minute, add in the coconut milk, chicken broth, rice vinegar, and hot sauce. Get this simmering and let it cook on low for 20-30 minutes until the sauce starts to thicken.

For a side dish, make some rice. Or buy a bag of microwavable rice if doing one thing was enough for one tired weeknight. Pat yourself on the back at work the next day when you microwave this and the entire office smells like curry. They stopped thinking about e-mails to follow up on for a few seconds and were transported to a tropical island, so job well done.

Have other curry type recipe ideas? Send them my way!

gdonheiser@gmail.com