It’s a bit of give and take in most homes when it comes to deciding what’s for dinner.

A common complaint in our house is “but you know this isn’t my favourite!” to which the reply is something like “That’s right. We had your favourite two nights ago. This is X’s favourite tonight. We don’t all get to eat exactly what we want every single night. There are 5 people to consider and it will be rare if we are all 100% happy with the dinner choice every single night. So be thankful and just EAT it!” Said with a loving and patient tone of course 🙂

My husband and I love curries and have struggled over the years to get the kids to eat them with us. I have gone through the stage of making one for us and something else for them, and I’ve come to the point where I don’t want to make multiple meals anymore.

There are those times where we will order our favourite take away curries and have those as a special ‘home date night’ after feeding the kids something simple and putting them to bed.

I recently tried another less complicated approach to a curry from one of my all time favourite cooks, Bill Granger. I love his simple approach to good home cooking, his small list of ingredients and easy steps that produce beautiful food. If there is a cook book I couldn’t live without, it would be his ‘Bills Basics’.

This Chicken Curry is from that book and instead of fussing with a whole lot of ingredients, a mortar and pestle to make your own paste or powder, he simple suggests to use a few tablespoons of a good curry powder.  This was such a hit and EVERYONE ate it in our house, even the 3 year old! I have made few small changes to the original recipe.

The quantity below served 2 adults and 3 kids with enough for leftovers for 1 the next day.

Ingredients

8 chicken thigh fillets, cut into quarters

2 tablespoons of curry powder (I used AYAM brand). If you are wanting to introduce curry to your kids and are nervous, you could cut this back a bit and see how it goes. We didn’t find it too spicy though.

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 kaffir lime leaves (Kaffir Lime leaves can be found in the fresh food section of a supermarket with the herbs. They add such a beautiful flavour to Asian cooking. I buy them in a container and keep them in the freezer for months. You can just take a leaf or 2 straight out of the freezer and pop it straight into the dish.)

1 tablespoon of ginger paste or grated fresh ginger

2 tablespoons fish sauce

1/2 tablespoon of brown sugar

1/2 a small sweet potato (Kumera), peeled and cut into small cubes

3-4 small potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes

a handful of green beans, cut into small pieces

400ml chicken stock

1 cup coconut milk

Fresh coriander leaves and stalks, roughly chopped to garnish for serving

Method

Toss the chicken pieces in the curry powder to coat. You can do this in a plastic bag or just in a bowl.

Heat the oil in a large pan over medium heat.

Add the chicken and cook until browned all over.

Add the kaffir lime leaves, ginger, fish sauce, brown sugar, sweet potato, potato and chicken stock and bring to the boil. Cover, reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes or until the chicken and vegies are cooked.

Stir in the coconut milk and green beans and simmer with the lid off for another 5 minutes or so to thicken the sauce.

Serve on it’s own garnished with coriander or with rice.