Ginger Chicken

I'm back in business, baby!
Today, that business is using up whatever in the fridge is about to go off which was chicken and steak. I couldn't find any recipes for steak that didn't necessitate a trip to the shops, and doing this blog has made me so perverted that I don't really want to cook anything that doesn't require the use of a recipe. So just like, you know, frying the steaks to make - steak - for dinner was out.

So taking all of that into consideration I decided on the rather simple looking Ginger Chicken from Keith Floyd's book of Great Curries. Great!
As I have written earlier in the Biryani post, I don't really trust Westerners trying it with asian food, but Floyd gets special dispensation because he's so cool! To be honest, alsmost none of the stuff he made on his shows looks that tasty, but I still want to try all of it. As far as I can tell the idea of his programs was to make international food accessible to English people. I remember one bit where he cooked something in France and the woman he gave it to to taste told him, in French, that it was kind of OK, but not that great. I think that's the point, you make it for yourself and everybody else can go jump in a lake!

OK look at the picture and see if you can tell where my downfall is going to come from. The recipe calls for the juice of 2 lemons or 2 limes. I figured that since the citruses we had were soooooooooooo small that I should use both the lemons and limes. Ha.
The method is pretty simple, you fry the chicken, then season it, and then simmer in the liquid. Hey, how is the flavour supposed to get in to the chicken meat? Shut up, that's how.

Perhaps another way in which my misguided self assurance sealed the doom of this dish is that I didn't use the entire bunch of spring onions. Come on, look at the size of that thing! We got it in the Turkish supermarket up the road and it's pretty big, yeah?

I also made Raita, but you don't hear me bragging about it. Check out the recipe below, though, I wouldn't have been able to do without it!

Result: 'Yeah, you can definitely taste the ginger' generously offered my stepmother. Everybody else was a bit more honest about the meal. Ahem.
All you could taste in the sauce was the lemon :( having said that I'm not sure if you would be able to taste anything significant in the absence of the lemon. The raw spring onion was supposed to provide the heat - um, maybe I didn't put enough in, or maybe it just tastes like onion. Or maybe I'm in the Twilight zone, up is down, left is right and this recipe is really authentic and delicious. Lets just say if I fed this to an Indian he would die of shock.
Raita was good.

I kind of have a cold today, so just leave me alone