Dinner and all that...

My house has been cold all day, and thus (thusly?) I have been cold all day.  I knew I wanted to cook something, and wandered to the grocery store to wander around to try and find something for non-specific hunger.  It took a bit of time to put it all together, and I can't say I was all original, but I do believe I improved upon what was on offer.

I have been hankering for "a curry" as my friends across the pond would say so I knew that would be part of it.  But I haven't been impressed with the meat cooked in the curry of late, so I wanted to try something different.  I saw "Spicy Panko breaded chicken breasts" at the meat counter and thought about these as the protein source.  But I did think that I could improve upon their version.  Remember, around here, spicy is often using black pepper...

I did want to try theirs, so I bought two of theirs and two naked breasts (I never thought I would ever work that phrase into a blog post ) so I could try my version.  I marinated the plain ones in a very hot Thai chili sauce that I mellowed out with a little coconut milk.  I then dredged them in Panko crumbs that I had seasoned with a bit of curry powder and baked them for 45 minutes.  The rest of the meal was simple red curry with lots of vegetables with brown (!!!  I know, brown) rice.   It wasn't even instant.  And an absolutely awful bottle of Australian Riesling.  It was dreck, swill, terrible.  Those Australians do a lot of things well, like having cute fuzzy animals, poisonous things, and shrimp-wearing Barby's, but Riesling is not one of of the good things.  Yuk.  And it cost more than $3.99!  It was actually a $15 bottle of wine that I was saving for some vague, unknown/unfulfilled purpose--glad I wasted it now instead of inflicting this on anyone.

So, in the cook off, which was best?  Actually, the grocery store was not bad at all.  I was pleasantly surprised.  While not that spicy it had good flavor and was tender and moist.  Mine was hotter, perhaps a little  bit too hot, but the coating was better as it was crunchier.  The flavor was all the way through my offering because they were marinated, while in the store bought ones it was mostly in the coating.  I actually would do either again, but if I bought them I would add a bit more spice flavor.  If nothing else, this would be very good with big huge monstrous  shrimp.

I am still cooking--more about that later.