The Lazy Gourmet

[Unorthodox]

Pretty sure she's making the sauce, not salad. 

[Rusty Edge]

I've been about cleaning out odds and ends ever since that mixed grill last week. Not necessarily lazy, other than I suppose the alternative is to make dedicated dishes with fewer servings, something along the lines of more involved lunches.

Anyway, today's offering was a pork roast cooked atop a some halved red potatoes, some peeled & sliced carrots, and a peeled & sliced parsnip. Included was a stick of butter, some onion soup, and some chicken broth. A little bit of mixed garlic/pepper/citrus/onion powder on the roast. Well received.

[Dale]

Made butter chicken tonight and just finished a batch of eclairs and cream puffs.

Sitting in front of the fire having an eclair and coffee while watching Nashville season 3.

[Unorthodox]

Made butter chicken tonight

As in indian? 

[Spacy]

Looks yummy!

[Dale]

Made butter chicken tonight

As in indian?

Yeah, Indian butter chicken.  I missed getting a photo of it.  Got devoured pretty fast by the ravenous vultures we call kids.

[Buster's Uncle]

I got appointed to grill steak on short notice.  It was just grilled steak -nothing on it- but excellent.

[Unorthodox]

Made butter chicken tonight

As in indian?

Yeah, Indian butter chicken.  I missed getting a photo of it.  Got devoured pretty fast by the ravenous vultures we call kids.

Got a recipe for that one?

[Dale]

Made butter chicken tonight

As in indian?

Yeah, Indian butter chicken.  I missed getting a photo of it.  Got devoured pretty fast by the ravenous vultures we call kids.

Got a recipe for that one?

Sorry, the sauce was Aldi brand. I just browned the chicken, made rice and poured it from the bottle.

Dunno how to make the sauce by hand.

[Unorthodox]

Dunno how to make the sauce by hand.

You should try it once, not terribly difficult. 

Simple method: Sautee onions and shallots in butter, add the chicken and garam masala (spice) and fry, add some tomato sauce.  (you'll probably need salt too)

Longhand method:  Sautee onions and shallots in butter, add tomatoes and garam masala and cook down to a paste.  Add chicken and fry.  Add water, coconut milk, yogurt, or cream to the dish to get the sauce the consistency you want. 

The TRICK is either making or finding a good garam masala. 

[Dale]

Dunno how to make the sauce by hand.

You should try it once, not terribly difficult. 

Simple method: Sautee onions and shallots in butter, add the chicken and garam masala (spice) and fry, add some tomato sauce.  (you'll probably need salt too)

Longhand method:  Sautee onions and shallots in butter, add tomatoes and garam masala and cook down to a paste.  Add chicken and fry.  Add water, coconut milk, yogurt, or cream to the dish to get the sauce the consistency you want. 

The TRICK is either making or finding a good garam masala.

Thanks Uno, I'll have to give this one a try!  Have you tried adding a bit of natural yoghurt, as we normally add it to the kid's plates to calm it down for them?

BTW, does the sauce keep all right?  We have lots of afternoon things on (Scouts, sport, working late some days) and our preference is to use bottles simply because of speed.  Spag bol sauce can go in the freezer of course, I assume this can too?

Yesterday I was working from home (benefit of being a programmer) and made a traditional lamb roast.  Some nights, specially in winter, it's great just to gorge out on a bit chunk of roast. 

[Unorthodox]

Dunno how to make the sauce by hand.

You should try it once, not terribly difficult. 

Simple method: Sautee onions and shallots in butter, add the chicken and garam masala (spice) and fry, add some tomato sauce.  (you'll probably need salt too)

Longhand method:  Sautee onions and shallots in butter, add tomatoes and garam masala and cook down to a paste.  Add chicken and fry.  Add water, coconut milk, yogurt, or cream to the dish to get the sauce the consistency you want. 

The TRICK is either making or finding a good garam masala.

Thanks Uno, I'll have to give this one a try!  Have you tried adding a bit of natural yoghurt, as we normally add it to the kid's plates to calm it down for them?

BTW, does the sauce keep all right?  We have lots of afternoon things on (Scouts, sport, working late some days) and our preference is to use bottles simply because of speed.  Spag bol sauce can go in the freezer of course, I assume this can too?

It SHOULD. 

When I cook that, it's specifically NOT to have leftovers.

Our home life, we have essentially 3 kinds of dinners. 

1:  hEt home, and I need to make enough so she has 'lunch' for work (she works graves). 
2:  hEt home, don't need/want leftovers.
3:  hEt working, just me and the kids. 


Butter Chicken falls into category 2.

However, I do make a crockpot curry and a tikka masala for category 1 (If I was going to be canning this year, I'd probably look into canning some tikka masala sauce just to have the bottled convenience, myself) , and I usually make enough to freeze a batch for a later date, so I would think butter chicken would fall into that category as well, I just don't have the pan to fry that much chicken at a time.  Only thing that might happen is some butter separate in the sauce.  Nothing a stovetop reheat (as opposed to microwave) wouldn't cure. 


Basically, I need to cook 3-4 "real" meals a week, one of which will need leftovers.  The other 3-4 days, it's me and the kids (half the time not Kyle), which tends to be making them cook, off the cuff, or prepacked.  I've often said I don't know how other married folk stay together having to see each other EVERY DAY... 

[Dale]

Sounds like you guys operate similar to us.  We have the following types of days:

- All of us get home around 6pm and need something quick to cook.
- I work from home, and some of us have evening stuff on, so something filling that's quick to eat.
- I work from home, and we all have a big sit down dinner.
- Weekends (work it out on the day).

[Buster's Uncle]

Uno, I do believe the Cholula has worked out pretty well for the hot-sauce element in my BBQ sauce, and thanks for that.

I had to make up a new batch of BBQ sauce over the weekend, deviating from the recipe topping page two significantly because we were almost out of smoke flavor and Worcestershire.  -But the former is somewhat redundant on grilled meat, and the latter doesn't add much the constituent sauces I use as base don't also have, besides the vinegary tang - I went heavy on lemon juice to compensate, and found the results better than I'd hoped.

When someone has made a grocery run -that's probably me driving, tomorrow- and stocked back up on supplies, I hope to make a new on-model batch while there's plenty of the lemony batch left for taste comparison...

[Rusty Edge]

Grocery shopping got postponed yesterday, and I ended up doing a mixed grill. I do charcoal. The problem was that when it came time to relight, we got about a 25mph wind. Went out a couple of times, I tried putting the lid on early to prevent sparks ( it hasn't rained, and the grass is dry ), but it couldn't get enough air that way. Ended up babysitting it and multitasking with watering the lawn.

There was a point to this anecdote.... So I put the food on, and the wind makes one side a blow torch and the other cool. I tried to do my best with turning flipping, and re-arranging. Charred the salmon skin, but otherwise it was great, blackened one side of some brats, got a cheeseburger well done... and the chicken breast my wife requested turned out perfect. Well, I'd rather be lucky than good.