My culinary adventures continue - I cook my first curry from scratch!

As Dear Hubby enjoys his curries, I thought it was about time to cook a curry from scratch. Curry is a regular feature for dinner but we usually buy those ready-mix curry sachets because it saves time. Since I now have time on my hands, I thought it would be fun to try and cook it from scratch.

I found a fabulous recipe on the Canadian Living website for a chicken and vegetable curry. Canadian Living is a magazine that I first encountered during our holidays in Canada earlier this year. I loved it, it's a home and family magazine with idiot-proof recipes that taste absolutely fabulous and makes you look like a total pro. So naturally, when I wanted a curry recipe, I turned to their website for help.

It actually took me a week to collect all the various spices required for the curry. Trust me to pick the one week in Jakarta when most supermarkets had run out of ground cumin! The list of ingredients was a mile long and really looked intimidating but trust me, the curry was actually quite simple to cook.

So last night, I gathered all my pots and pans, prepared all my spices and got to work. I paired the curry with a pilau rice recipe from Jamie Oliver that I found in a magazine. Dear Hubby looked very wary when he entered the kitchen to pour himself his 2nd gin and tonic because my overly ambitious experiments usually never turn out right. He looked even more suspicious when he saw the pot of curry contained many things he'd never seen in his curries before such as cinnamon sticks and bay leaves. I explained to him, "Dear... I'm sure they pick all that out before they serve you the curry at our regular Indian restaurant!"

When dinner was served, Dear Hubby gingerly took a bite and... well, it's hard to explain but if you've watched Ratatouille, you'll remember that scene towards the end of the movie where that awful food critic took a spoonful of his ratatouille and his eyes just popped open with surprised pleasure as all his childhood memories came rushing back... and Dear Hubby's face had a similar sort of expression. The curry was delicious! It certainly had a much more complex taste to it when compared to the ready mixes and luckily for me, I'd judged the spicy level of the curry just right so it didn't burn up Dear Hubby's tongue.

Boy, was I delighted. And relieved! After the Spaghetti Carbonara incident, I couldn't afford another disastrous kitchen experiment. I beamed with pride and pleasure as I watched him enjoy the curry, all that slaving over a hot stove was pretty worth it.

I'm posting this because if an idiot cook like me can make that curry happen, anyone can. So check out the recipe, try it out and have fun doing it!