justkristen dreams during work and sleeps when she's at home
Adventures in the Kitchen — 1 day ago
Yesterday, after work I decided to finally cook the beef curry dish that I had planned on cooking for a while. I already had all the ingredients, and set about making it.
first I chopped up 2 vidalia onions. man! my eyes were stinging! then, giving a cursory glance to the cookbook, I put the onions in a casserole dish (I took out and dirtied like seriously 5 casserole dishes trying to find a 3 liter one… I finally found a 2.8 and was like, ENOUGH!) with some canola oil and let it cook on medium-low heat. I proceeded to chop up 3 cloves of garlic, occasionally scampering over to the stove and stirring the sizzling onions, getting zapped by tiny hot flecks of oil occasionally for seemingly no reason. Then, I added the garlic and a tablespoon (and then some more cause it smelled good!) of pre-minced ginger. I stirred the stuff around a bit and realized that..! I had forgotten to cut the meat! so I took the veggies off of the hot part of the stove, quickly chopped up the beef chuck, took off all the fat, and reveled in the cold sliminess, which I found oddly kind of cool. Then I looked at the recipe again. “add the curry paste”... but I didn’t have curry paste, I had Golden Curry (the only stuff the store had!) I added that, and glanced ahead at the directions—noticed the words “add tomato paste and beef stock”!!!
and realized I had no idea where the beef stock or tomato paste were.
Max called, and I picked up the phone, half-mad and in an expletive-sputtering frenzy. apparently I scared him a little. but there were more pressing issues at hand!
so I clawed my way through the pantry, found the tomato paste, but.. no beef stock! there was a can of condensed beef broth that I had bought to season vegetables a while ago but had forgotten, and so I used that instead. BUT I had been so flustered, I put it in early! I put everything in in the wrong order after that, couldn’t get the tomato paste can open (I couldn’t figure out the new can opener) and ended up spearing it open and scooping out the paste with a Winnie the Pooh baby fork.
I put it in the oven for 50 minutes on 350, waited to catch my breath from my agonizing flurry of cooking, then put in the potatoes (which I cut into sixths although the recipe called for cutting them in half) and I put them in for about 15 minutes more than the recipe recommended, and they still were a tiny bit too hard. :( I added the peas, put it in for a bit longer, and viola! it was done!
everyone loved it, and I was exhausted.
I thought it was good too. when kathryn was walking towards the front door, on her way back from the doctor’s, she said, “IT SMELLS SO GOOD!!” I was very proud, as I hardly ever cook.
and I am attaching a picture of my masterpiece…
and it is only 350 calories per serving!
