Date night. It used to mean theatres, jazz clubs, bars and walking through town together. Now that we have two wee people and no obligated babysitters it now means a take-away in front of the TV after the kids are in bed. On the rare occasion that we do actually get to leave the house we often spend the time talking about or worrying about the kids anyway so our stay-in date nights feel more secure and cosy in many ways.
We started using a few different take-away places before we settled on our favourites. Our favourite Chinese place does something amazing with deep fried beef and our favourite Indian place does an incredible mango curry that quickly became a firm favourite. That is until the incident.
We’d gotten used to a delivery time of 45-60 minutes but on this night when we were both really really hungry that hour came and went and at 10 minutes past I got a text message to say that there would be a delay of 20 minutes. We were annoyed, but at least we had our own supply of poppadoms and mango chutney so we broke those open expecting to finish our starter and have the main on the table. We waited, and waited. At the 2 hour mark finally our food arrived. By this stage we were hungry enough that we could eat an entire zoo, let alone a horse. The curry tasted great but there was a horrid aftertaste of feeling ripped off. I got online and fired off a message to the company expecting at the very least an apology. Nothing.
And so it was that I decided it was about time that I learnt how to make my own mango curry. A little bit of experimentation has gotten me the following recipe and to be honest, we like it better than the take-away. And even better, if I use the slow cooker I can do the hard work in the morning and we can sit down to eat as soon as the kids are asleep – no more waiting!
Anyway, I do hope you like it. Let me know in the comments if you give this a try.
Serves 4
Ingredients
4-5 chicken breast fillets diced (you can use thigh fillets, or even another meat if you prefer)
2 onions
3 Tb korma paste (milk allergy? Try the Sainsbury’s version which at time of writing is totally dairy free)
1 can mango pulp (or 2 cans of mango cheeks blended)
1 can coconut milk
1 sachet of coconut cream
handful of toasted flaked almonds
Directions
Chop one onion into thin wedges. Set aside.
Quarter the other onion and place that into a food processor (or blender).
Brown the chicken in a little oil in a frying pan. Put that into your slow cooker and add the onion wedges to the pan. Cook until the onion softens. Add to the slow cooker with the chicken.
Put the korma paste, mango, coconut milk and coconut cream into the food processor with the quartered onion. Whizz it up until it forms a sauce – taste test for the heat levels. Add more korma paste if you prefer a hotter curry.
Put the sauce into the slow cooker and stir.
Cook for 4 hours on high or 8 hours on low.
Serve with rice and sprinkled with the almonds.
Note – if you find the curry too hot, stir a tablespoon of lemon juice into the curry to neutralise the heat a little.
