Oh-no Khaukswe (Burma)

This is a recipe for a type of chicken, coconut curry.  Now, anyone who knows me, knows that curries are not on the list of Emily-approved dishes.  There are very few curries I would eat, fewer that I would say I like, and absolutely none I would make for myself.  My family tell stories of trips to Indian restaurants I would flat out refuse to even go on, I didn't even want to be within smelling distance of the food if I could avoid it. I'm not really 100% sure of the reason for this myself. I think the main issue I have with curries is that the mix of flavours is not something I enjoy.  But, having said that, if someone does make a curry for me I will, of course, eat it - because I'm not one to be rude.  Soph and my brother-in-law both enjoy a good curry though so they were very enthusiastic about this recipe.  

On the list of ingredients for this one it's basically just chilli, turmeric and coconut milk. None of which I like.  So, good start I suppose.  

Well, to be fair, this wasn't the start.  The first part of the recipe was jointing the chicken. Something Soph and I had absolutely no idea how to do, so we turned to the internet and found a very useful instructional video. Soph, of course, did all of the hard (gross) work of ripping apart the carcase of the chicken, whereas I watched and pretended I was doing something useful.  She did an excellent job so I think my role as observer was definitely the best choice.    

For the curry, the chicken boils in stock made from the carcase, which is later boiled down and turned into the sauce. The chicken is then shredded and fried with chilli and onions before adding the boiled down stock and a tin of coconut milk.  

Up until this point I had actually been rather looking forward to trying this dish. Then I saw the chilli go in and I was getting a little worried.  And when I smelled the coconut I was even more dubious about whether or not I was going to like this dish.  Usually, I try and fill up on rice and bread whenever we have curries but the book described this one as a wet curry and watching it cook I was getting more and more convinced that I wouldn't be able to avoid the chilli, since the noodles were clearly going to be coated in this sauce.  

This curry is served with noodles (which is a little odd to us since we usually only eat curry with rice and naan bread). The noodles are shallow-fried in a frying pan and then drained on kitchen towel and later mixed into the curry.  This wasn't too much work but, since they were mixed into the sauce, I'm not sure it was entirely necessary.  




The result of this work was a fantastic chicken curry - for Soph and my brother-in-law.  By my standards, it was okay.  I quite liked the turmeric and coconut milk but it had a little too much chilli in it for me.  One thing we all said was that it had a surprisingly complex taste considering it only had two main spices in it.  Obviously it didn't get put through the baby test but since Soph and my brother-in-law were both big fans of it I'm sure we'll end up making this curry again - although hopefully with less chilli.