Week 45 - Pacific Islands

For the Week 45 Pacific Islands challenge, I decided to go with a Micronesian coconut chicken curry recipe I found on food.com. There aren't really many restaurants that cover the cuisine of the Pacific Islands (outside of Hawaii), at least not here, so we haven't had much exposure to it. I researched this mostly by searching different countries + cuisine on Google and seeing what looked good. Luckily, thanks to my Sporcle geography obsession, I didn't have to research what countries were in the Pacific Islands, so that saved me a step.

The ingredients for our chicken curry (adapted from the original were):

- olive oil ($0.25)

- 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts ($3)

- 3 potatoes ($0.62)

- 4 carrots ($0.45)

- 1 large yellow onion ($0.50)

- 1 large spoonful of minced garlic ($0.15)

- a few squeezes of ginger paste ($0.25)

- 2 red bell peppers ($1.98)

- 2 14-oz cans of coconut milk ($1.98)

- curry powder ($0.30)

- chili powder (the Asian ground red pepper one) ($0.15)

- salt and pepper ($0.05)

- brown rice ($1)

The total for the recipe was approximately $10.68. Pretty good for a filling dinner for two plus enough for lunch another day.

The steps for making the curry (also modified from the original) were:

- prep: peel and chop potatoes, peel and chop carrots, chop onions, chop red bell peppers, trim fat from chicken breasts and slice into cubes, set up rice in rice cooker

- add olive oil to large pot and then cook chicken until cooked through

- remove cooked chicken to a separate bowl and add potatoes and carrots to the pot

- fry potatoes and carrots for 5-10 minutes

- add onions, cook for another few minutes

- add ginger and garlic, cook for another few minutes

- add red bell peppers, cook for another few minutes

- add chicken, coconut milk, curry powder, chili powder, salt, and pepper

- simmer until potatoes are soft and curry has thickened (could also smash some potatoes against the side of the pot to help it thicken like I did), probably at least 20 minutes

- season to taste while cooking (I did but ran out of curry powder)

- serve over rice

We liked this curry but it would have been better with more curry powder (didn't realize how little we had left). It reminded me a little bit of the curry from the Caribbean challenge which makes sense since that also had a coconut milk base, curry powder spice paste, and bell peppers in it. The chili powder here really came through, much more than the curry powder even though we used less. I would make this again, just with more curry powder.