curry chicken and mango rice

For a week now, I’ve been battling what the UrgentCare doctor calls a cocktail of sinus infection, bronchitis, and ear infection. With their powers combined they are! — a great big pain in my rear. Until yesterday, when he prescribed me a trio of drugs including codeine, I hadn’t slept a full night in quite some time. I’d been existing on water, apple juice, and whatever bland offerings our pantry had, so once I started to feel a little better I decided I wanted something with some pizazz. Something … with curry powder.

A lonely mango has been rotting in our fridge since spring break, so I decided to start there. Allrecipes.com offered up mango rice, so I pulled out the slightly squishy fruit and got to work. Except I didn’t realize just how rotten it had become, because there were about three slivers that were usable — the rest was gray and kind-of spotty. Crap, crap, crap, I sang to myself, until I remembered the granny smith apple sitting on my desk. I couldn’t remember how long it had been there, but it didn’t seem to be imploding in on itself like rotting apples do, so I grabbed it and sliced with gusto.

Did you know apples start sprouting from the inside? Makes sense ’cause that’s where the seeds are, but I was amazed to see little coiled roots trying to push their way out of the core. Momentarily defeated and a bit grossed out, I decided to slice off the outer edges (which looked fine) and add it to the mango mix. The rice called for a bit of chicken broth and some brown sugar, so I got that going, adding the fruit at the last moment so it was warm but not mushy.

The mango rice recipe included curried chicken, but after perusing it I decided to go my own way. I diced some garlic and added curry, paprika, salt and pepper, which I figured I would sprinkle over the chicken. But, ah — you’re apparently supposed to rub it in, so I rolled up my sleeves, dipped my fingertips into the dry mix, and went to work. It was a little awkward. I wondered if I should be asking it where it’s from and how it liked its stay at Kroger, or, at the very least, playing a little soothing Enya music. Into the oven it went, out came the rice and some peas, and here we go:

Peas artfully arranged by The Husband.

It actually wasn’t bad. I put some curry and paprika on my rice and some pepper on the peas, and it made for a pretty satisfying dinner. Of course, I was comparing it against ramen noodles and graham crackers, so that’s not saying much. The Husband enjoyed it despite his dislike of curry, so I may give my mother’s chicken curry a shot next. We probably only had that dish a handful of times when I was a child, but it remains one of my favorites. See you next time!