Always Have A Backup Plan

So, the other night, I decided I was going to get nutty with coconut. I’d been thinking about something Indianish…some nice, creamy coconut milk, some shredded coconut for flavor, a bit of cilantro, some spice, maybe some nuts…I was in total experiment mode.

Susan threw me for a bit of loop by bringing home a whole coconut. Crikeys…what the crap was I supposed to do with that? But, I like a good challenge, so I read up on coconut smashing in “How to Cook Everything” by Mark Bittman (a wonderful bible of cooking…this could really suffice as your only cookbook). As dinner time neared, I wrapped my coconut in three Target bags, and whapped the crap out of it on my concrete stoop. This worked like a champ; the coconut was in several manageable pieces.

I took it inside, and scraped some of the remaining brown stuff off the flesh, and then took a small nibble to check out the flavor. It was…bitter and nasty. There seemed to be very little actual coconut flavor, and a very bitter aftertaste. Now I was in a bit of a quandary…what do I do now? I thought about how to salvage the situation as I tossed hunks of coconut flesh into my Cuisinart, specifically, about a recipe for an Indian dish called Chicken Khorma. I fished around in my pantry for some sultanas that I knew I had, so that I could add a bit of flavor and some sweetness to balance the bitterness. But the sultanas were in a single mass; they had obviously been in there awhile. How long I wasn’t sure, so I broke off a bit and tasted them, and nearly gagged. The date on the box? Sometime in 2008. I just about gagged as I spit what was in my mouth into the trash, followed by the rest of the nearly fossilized sultanas.

I grabbed a newer box of regular raisins, and threw some in there. Remembering how bitter the coconut was, I tossed in some more. To this I added some dry-toasted nuts, some cilantro, a can of coconut milk, cilantro, and a jalapeno. I whirled it all up and tasted it. It was….well, it was weird. It definitely wasn’t good. It had this overly sweet (too many damn raisins!), nutty, slightly bitter aftertaste thing going. I asked Susan to taste it, who immediately became silent. Normally, if she likes something, the feedback is immediate; if she doesn’t like it, she takes a bit longer as she tries to formulate an answer. She looked at me with a bit of a grimace. I knew I was screwed.

However, I did have a backup plan. I had gotten a big tub of plain yogurt that day at the store since I was making homemade naan to go with the dish. So, as Susan dumped the nasty coconut mess down the drain, I quickly formulated a new plan. I minced about 1 ½ inches of fresh ginger, along with 3-4 cloves of garlic. I melted 2 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet, and once that was bubbling, I fried my spices (2 teaspoons each of Penzey’s Vindaloo powder, Garam Masala, and medium Chile powder). After that became wonderfully fragrant, I added the garlic and ginger, and sautéed that for about 5 minutes. Then I added two medium chopped onions, and sautéed those for about 10 minutes until they were translucent. To this I threw in about 2.2 pounds of cubed boneless, skinless, chicken thighs, and sautéed those for a while. Once those had browned a bit, I tossed in about 1 ½ cups of the plain yogurt, stirred, and let simmer for about 30 minutes to let the sauce thicken. I served it over plain white rice with hot, fresh naan…fantastic.

So, although my original plan went in the crapper (literally), I think dinner turned out pretty darn well.