The Ankle Biter Eats!

My daughter is now two and a quarter. Age, rather than broadening her horizons, has worked in the opposite direction—at least as far as food is concerned. I had a hard enough time getting her to eat any sort of food with protein before. Now, I’m mostly limited to scrambled eggs.

It is with that in mind that I write what I consider to be wonderfully improbable, but true. My daughter likes my chicken curry.

My daughter asks for eggs, orange juice, and toast at just about every meal. Recently, I’d decided it was time to take on a new mantra: I will not live my life in fear—at least not in the kitchen. In a fit of rebellion, I decided to make chicken curry for dinner.

I made a recipe I thought would work with the ingredients I had in the house—but it was much too spicy for a toddler. Then I remembered a lesson I learned from a Mexican chef. If your tongue is burning from spicy food, it helps to have something sweet. So I added carrots and raisins for sweetness and yoghurt to make it creamier. It worked perfectly. It was exactly the comfort food sort of curry I wanted and more surprisingly, my daughter really liked it. I have to say I approve. Anyway you look at it, it’s a healthy dish. First there’s the meat which she will eat eventually after eating some raisins and sauce first. Then there are the vegetables which accidentally get eaten along with the sauce. Then there is the sauce which is mostly chicken broth with some tomato, yoghurt, and spices. Even if she only eats the sauce, I’m happy.

I’ve tried this recipe twice already, both times with equal success. The recipe takes about an hour to make, but only about 30 minutes to prepare, and it reheats wonderfully.

I have to credit the basis of the recipe to this recipe for Red Chicken Curry by Emeril Lagasse which I found on the Food Network website. However, I took a lot of spiciness out of the recipe by adding yoghurt, carrots, and raisins, and I save time by using a curry spice I like rather than making my own Garam Masala.

Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: 30 minutes
Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients
2 tablespoons of your favourite red curry spice—mine is for making Tikka Masala
2 teaspoons turmeric
1 large chicken fryer, about 4 pounds, cut into 10 pieces (or 3 pounds of chicken breasts and/or chicken thighs on the bone)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 chopped onions
Salt
2 teaspoons chopped garlic
1 cup chopped fresh or canned tomatoes
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
3 cups chicken stock
1 cup plain yoghurt
1 cup sultana raisins
1 cup sliced carrots (optional)
1 chopped red pepper (optional)

Season the chicken with the curry powder and turmeric. Set aside. Heat the oil in a large saute pan, over medium heat. Brown the chicken for about 3 to 4 minutes on each side. Remove and set aside.

Saute the onions in the pan until soft—about 4 minutes. Add the garlic, tomatoes and ginger. Continue to saute for 1 minute. Add the chicken stock. Stir in the yoghurt. Add the carrots or red pepper and reserved chicken pieces. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for about 25 to 30 minutes or until the chicken is tender.

Note: the second time I made this recipe, my daughter looked at it like she wasn’t going to try it, so I squeezed a bit of honey on top of hers where she could see. She started eating the honey, and soon enough she was fishing around for the raisins, then eating bits of the thigh meat (I’d removed the skin and taken it off the bone) and then drinking the broth with her spoon just like before.

I love salmon. If it weren’t for the fear of mercury poisoning, I’d eat it several times a week. So I was thrilled when I found an easy recipe for salmon that my daughter and I both love. Honey & Soy Salmon Skewers from The Picky Eater section of First Meals by Annabel Karmel.

My only problem with the recipe is that when I want to make something quickly, it doesn’t always work out because you have to cut the salmon into cubes, prep the skewers by soaking them in cold water (and they still burn in the oven), and let it marinade for an hour. The cooking time is only 6 minutes, but the preparation can be a bit much if you’re short on time.

So, I modified the recipe a little bit to make the preparation time negligible.

Ingredients
1/2 lb salmon fillet

Marinade
1 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp sake

Mix together the ingredients for the marinade in a bowl. Put the salmon fillet in bowl making sure it is well coated. Put the bowl in the fridge and leave to marinade for about an hour.

Preheat the broiler—sometimes, I use a toaster oven—to high. Line a broiler pan with foil, and place the salmon fillet on the pan and cook for 6 minutes or more. You want the salmon to be moist on the inside. When it’s done, it will flake easily with a fork.

Take the salmon out of the oven out to rest for a minute while you prepare the teriyaki sauce. It will continue to cook a bit while it’s cooling.

Put the remaining marinade in a pan and simmer for a minute or so until reduced.

Divide the fillet into two portions. Serve the salmon with rice (or without) and spoon the reduced marinade over the salmon. You can put some rice in a child’s bowl and flake the salmon over the rice then spoon some of the marinade over the salmon.

Note:
At going on 2 years old, my daughter is starting to like more types of food, but it has always been difficult to find meat dishes that she likes. When she was a year old, I discovered that she liked finely chopped chicken disguised with mashed avocado and a drop of orange juice. After making the teriyaki salmon recipe, I realized that she also liked teriyaki chicken, and chicken from my salad that has a bit of vinaigrette on it. So, my next step is to try more recipes with marinades.