Room To Roam

As my $.02 in the Great Kitchen Responsibility Debate, I think that the main issue that we face is one of space. With our tiny, galley-style kitchen, it gets really crowded really quickly, particularly if one of the cooks is all flailing arms and elbows like myself.

Michelle refers to herself as my sous chef, but that's hardly fair. We're more like a baseball pitching rotation, each of us having the night off when the other cooks. While I'm certainly the grillmaster and Michelle is most certainly the pastry chef, there is little rhyme or reason to the distribution of other kitchen labor.

There have been a couple of instances where one of us has been "banished" from the kitchen so that the other can work in peace (usually, if I'm requiring space, it's because I've screwed something up and am trying to fix it).

A single memorable meltdown did occur early on in our married life, but I'll have to check with The Boss before posting it on an open forum.

To be continued (maybe)...

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As requested, the Chicken-Mango Curry "recipe" that we brought back from Cayman. The liquid measurements are approximate, since I'm one of those annoying "I just eyeball it" cooks.

3 tbsp butter
1 lb. chicken breast meat
1/2 yellow onion, diced
1/2 tsp. allspice
2 cans coconut milk
2 tbsp. yellow Caribbean curry powder (from the "ethnic" row at the grocery store)
1 ripe mango, cut into chunks
1 cup of mango nectar
1/2 cup of chicken stock
Salt & pepper to taste
Other veggies as desired (add when the onions are added)

Tools:
A big-arse stock pot

Brown the onions and chicken in the butter and allspice. Add 1 tablespoon of the curry powder and coat the chicken. Add the coconut milk, mango nectar, chicken stock and the other tablespoon of curry powder. Bring to a boil and then simmer for as long as humanly possible. The longer it simmers, the better it will be. Add the mango after everything else has simmered for about 10 minutes.

Serve with rice or rice noodles, and garnish with basil or Sriracha hot sauce if you're feeling frisky.