Tuesday dinner

Part four in a series of a week of dinners.

This is when things start to get singularly less impressive. I stop cooking, as such, and start putting things together in such a way that food arrives on the table. We have reached the part of my week called "Ten-minute dinners" and also "What's in the house?"

I took some chicken tenders out of the freezer - half a small package, which amounts to about five tenders, which is probably half a normal American restaurant's lunch serving but stretches to close to two meals in this house. When I make a ham and cheese sandwich I put one slice of ham and once slice of cheese in it: I really hate shop-bought subs in this country where they shove in an inch of each and then the roll won't even close.

We're not vegetarians, but I find large slabs of meat offputting and I try to stick to the recommended pack-of-cards-size serving, augmented by lots of vegetables. If I manage to buy the organic meat, I feel better about it and this makes it go further. If I end up buying the evil meat, well at least we're not eating too much of it.

So. Defrosted my chicken. Browned it in some vegetable oil. Chopped up a red pepper. Opened, drained, and rinsed a can of garbanzo beans (chickpeas). Put them in the pan to heat up. Plopped in, with a satisfying schlurp, my secret ingredient: a jar of Seeds of Change korma sauce (look for it in your local organic market). Here you can see it delightfully retaining its sausagey jar shape, before I stirred it all together. (Reminds me of tinned cranberry sauce, the way Americans like it.)

Made basmati rice. Put the one on the other on a plate. Served dinner. No muss, no fuss, delicious. This is how I like my dinners: two pots - one carb, one everything else.  Not too much washing up.

The korma isn't remotely spicy - sometimes I use the Tikka Masala version, which has a tiny bit more spice to it and might profit from a blob of plain yogurt on top. If I'm really lazy/out of food, I just use the garbanzos and the sauce, and maybe some frozen peas to green it up. Then it only does two servings, but with the chicken and the pepper there's (almost) enough for four in here.

Serve with a nice refreshing beer, if you like that sort of thing.