Curries

It's Saturday morning and our weekend is fairly mapped out. Not to worry - there are plenty of isolated hours for us to have to ourselves in the apartment keeping warm, doing chores and what not. Last night we toyed with eating out, however after Craig turned his nose up at my invitation to sushi (I know we just had it not long ago and it was soon, too soon to make a return trip for raw fish!) and not only did he flat-out refuse, but he made up some nonsense about Ooki smelling like a dirty fish tank! So instead of eating out I cooked at home. First of all, I must once again point out the small town that is New York City. Thursday night after work there were service alerts for our regular commute so we detoured at 74th Street in Queens and took an E. I will, on occasion, do this, but I by no means have a favored car on the E train as we do on the 4, 5 and 7 lines that we consistently ride. We got on the E and I took a seat next to a young guy about our age reading, of all things, Jaws (yes, the killer shark Jaws). It was a tattered copy and I glanced at the guy and he had blue earplugs in, for some reason - so that's two oddities - reading Jaws and wearing blue earplugs. So, yesterday we once again detoured on the E, because the E takes us to the 6 Local train and Craig was going to take it to 96th to stop at Blockbuster and I was going to travel to either Food Emporium or C-town in search of mangoes. Half-hidden behind another man, Craig noticed another set of hands holding a tattered copy of Jaws. Craig said, "Did we see that same guy yesterday or is that guy also reading Jaws?" The other man was standing at a position where I could not see the reader's head's ears' possible plugs. Of course, as all things go on the trains, people shuffle about and things change, and sure enough, the man standing moved and there they were - the blue earplugs! That means two days in a row we saw the same guy on a train we rarely ride, same car. This City is small!*So, I found an interesting recipe on Cooking Light's site whose ingredients seemed more like a science experiment to me than cooking. I find that that is what keeps me from being bored in the kitchen, when a recipe tends to be more art/science than a basic ground beef tomato sauce on spaghetti, etc. The title of the recipe is Curried Chicken Penne with Mango Chutney (or something to that effect). Chutney! Homemade chutney! I don't even like fruit stuff. The chutney is comprised of diced mango, chopped onion, brown sugar, black pepper, lime juice, salt, ginger, curry powder and water and the chicken is cut into small bites and sauteed with garlic then simmered in lite coconut milk, red curry paste, fish sauce, salt and sugar (I'm potentially forgetting stray ingredients) with broccoli florets - crazy! I know I'm not at the level of cooking where gourmet is an adjective I'd toss around, but I do much appreciate probing Cooking Light for their curiously more adventurous fare. And Craig came over to me last night while I was cooking, and he said the sweetest thing about how he's grateful that I try new things and am unafraid (all the while I was making homemade chutney - look at me go!) The final dish was everything combined mixed up with whole wheat penne. It was really pretty fantastic - spicy, not at all sweetened by the mango and the amount of sugar, and for Weight Watchers, one serving is a low tally of 4 points! And a serving is 1 cup and 1/3rd! not the usual 1 cup of pasta. We were both pretty pleased so this recipe will now step into the rotation for a weekend night (prep time is pretty lengthy, dicing 2 mangoes and measuring everything out) but it's one that I may get better at with practice, much like my roasted red pepper sauce for chicken or my spicy chicken cakes with horse radish aioli - all much thanks to Cooking Light for finding its way into my kitchen and giving me all the more reason to monitor what we eat.*Now it's off to Lord & Taylor and Macy's. Bagels first. Happy January-random weekend, New York.