Khao Poon Gai

Whole 30 Paleo Compliant Lao Khao Poon

Khao Poon Gai is a Lao curry noodle dish. It's fragrant, spicy, and so satisfying. The creamy coconut milk makes the broth silky smooth, the red curry paste gives it a aromatic kick. Traditionally this is serve with rice vermicelli noodles and there is bamboo in it. I'm doing a Whole 30 this month, and my family doesn't like bamboo, so there you go.  If you prefer rice noodles or veggie noodles I hope you'll try this soup. It's so good.

Lao Khao Poon ingredients.

Easy Peasy Curry Chickpeas

Some nights I like to plan for something easy on the menu that takes very little time and doesn't require a trip to the grocery store. These chickpeas are quick, easy, and healthy. Diced chicken is pictured but I've made them without also. If you want to use chicken, just dice up a chicken breast and saute it to brown before adding the chickpeas and tomatoes. Leave it out for a wonderful vegan dish! This dish is very easy children can chop vegetables, saute them. They can rinse the chickpeas, or pick them over if you are using dry ones . Very easy family friendly dish! I hope you'll try it.

If you are looking for the Instant Pot version of this dish, please follow the link here.

Mughlai Chicken

I got this recipe off of Food Network off from the show Nigella Feasts.
It's a pretty good recipe, I did tweak it, it wasn't spicy enough for me, nor does it have that beautiful color that I like.
It is made with chicken thighs which I prefer over white meat. They gave the dish a depth of flavor that was nice. The cardamom, cinnamon and cloves gave it a beautiful fragrance. The crunch of the almonds gave it a wonderful texture. It's an easy dish to make. Below I will post the recipe with the minor changes I made to it.

1 (1-inch) piece ginger, peeled (I used more)
4 cloves garlic, peeled
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander (for the life of my I could not find my coriander seeds- because of this I put a tiny bit of Indian curry powder in the dish)
1/2 teaspoon dried chili flakes (I have Thai dried ground chili that I used, even then I put 2 teaspoons)
4 tablespoons ground almonds
1/2 cup water
5 cardamom pods, bruised
1 cinnamon stick, broken in half (I used two sticks)
2 bay leaves
4 cloves
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 pounds boned chicken thighs, each cut into 2
2 onions, finely chopped
1 cup Greek yogurt (I only had regular yogurt)
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sultanas (golden raisins) (I don't put raisins in anything if i can help it)
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup flaked almonds, toasted, to garnish
(I garnished with parsley, because I was too lazy to get the cilantro out and because the dish looked so bland.)
OK so these onions were very roughly chopped, my eyes were watering since i had already cut two other onions for DH's Massaman curry.






Put the ginger, garlic, cumin, coriander, and chili into a food processor. Process into a paste, add ground almonds and water process again. Set aside.






Heat oil in a large pan and sear chicken on each side. Just to seal. Remove and set aside.







In the same pan toss in the whole spices, do not let them burn.









Add onions and cook until soft.








Add reserved almond paste mixture. Stir fry until fragrant. On a gentle heat.








The recipe says until it turns a color, it does get a LITTLE deeper in color but not much.
Add yogurt half a cup at a time and stir to make a sauce, add broth cream and raisins if using.





Return chicken to the pan along with any juices in the bowl. Add the gram masala, sugar and salt.
Cover and simmer for about 20 minutes, check to make sure chicken is cooked through.
Serve garnished with almonds.
I didn't have basmati rice so I had Jasmine with the girls.

Thai Green Chicken Curry... on a whim...

Last night I was craving Indian curry so badly that I googled a restaurant near us and invited Shell out for lunch today. DH wasn't able to meet us so I made him Thai curry (green). I didn't have any bell peppers which I usually put in the dish but it turned out OK. I served it with coconut brown rice. I was still full from lunch so I had a bowl of honeycombs cereal. The girls had rice, fruit and cereal, the curry is too spicy for them, even with yogurt on top.
The method I use is very basic. I use Mae Ploy curry paste because I live in a dinky little town where fresh ingredients to make curry pastes are impossible to find. I was curious to see where the lady at the Indian restaurant got her groceries, she said she drove to Atlanta every weekend, that's an 8 hour trip. I told her she should start selling groceries.




To prepare this dish cut chicken into bite sized pieces. Select vegetables, I generally use bell peppers and onions. I didn't have bell peppers today so I used zucchini. DH prefers breasts to thighs, if I were making this for me I would use boneless skinless thighs or even bone in thighs. I find that the meat is more tender, moist and flavorful.
Brown the chicken in a little olive oil in batches...





Working in batches transfer the chicken onto a clean plate, I put it along side my vegetables.













This is the curry paste I use along with a can of coconut milk.

















Put about 2 tablespoons of the paste in the same pan the chicken was browned in and add about a 1/2 cup of coconut milk cook until fragrant scraping off the chicken bits from the bottom of the pan. Add another cup or so of coconut milk and stir.









Put the onions in and cook for about 3 minutes. (if you don't like your onions soft, put all the vegetables in at once)









Add remaining vegetables and chicken along with any juices on the plate. Stir and cook until vegetables are tender. Add chicken broth if you like a saucy curry.