News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Jan. 20, 2017: Cooking is a challenge sometimes, especially when you are unable to find the right ingredients to make a special dish you have a strong desire for.
Ingredients are sometimes not available for one reason or another. Sometimes they are simply out of season or were recalled. When these situations occur, I find the best thing to do is to try to find substitutes. For example you can substitute meats, fish and various vegetables.
It is difficult though to substitute spices. For example if a dish calls for curry powder and it is difficult to find curry powder because the store is out of stock or recalled due to lead contamination as was the case recently, you have to become creative and create a new dish completely.
Instead of curry goat, cook stew or barbecue goat. Instead of curry chicken, cook stewed chicken instead and instead of Curry shrimp or fish, cook shrimp or fish run dung, that is, fish or shrimp in coconut milk.
Today I will also share with you a new dish I created – because I could not find any curry powder recently – using chicken and coconut milk. It is called Coconut Chicken.
Ingredients
2lbs Chicken Breast (fillet )
1/4 tsp Salt
2 sprigs Thyme
1/4 cup scallions (chopped)
1/2 cup red onions (minced)
2 cloves of Garlic
4 pimento seeds
1/2 tsp scotch bonnet pepper (minced)
2 bay leaves
2 cups Fresh Coconut Milk
1/2 cup coconut oil
Method
Wash and cut chicken fillet into finger length pieces.
Add all the seasonings and marinate overnight.
In a Dutch pot, add the coconut oil. When the oil is hot, remove chicken from marinade.
Add chicken pieces to hot oil and fry until golden brown.
Put all the fried chicken to rest on a plate lined with paper towel to absorb any excess oil.
Remove any remaining oil from the Dutch pot and add the Fresh coconut milk.
Allow the coconut milk to simmer for 7 minutes them add the fried chicken and the remaining marinate.
Cook chicken in the coconut milk until tender. Taste for salt.
Serve with rice, dumplings and steam cabbage or turn Cornmeal/ Polenta/Mayi Moulen
Bon Appetite
