Dinner tonight... Spicy Coconut Chicken Casserole

We were not planning to be home tonight. If this week hadn't been so intense for me at work, we would likely be on a bus right now to Manhattan. But since I have been spending 10-11 hours a day at the office for the past few days, we decided to give ourselves a break and head to New York in the morning instead. This change of plans meant that I could make dinner for us, always a good thing. Spicy Coconut Chicken Casserole is yet another recipe from the October issue of Everyday Food Magazine. This is the second time I've tried it and I think it came out a little bit better the first time. In any case, it was great to fill the kitchen with the scent of jasmine rice.


The recipe calls for bone-in chicken breasts, but I chose to use about half a pound of thin-sliced boneless breasts instead. As a result, I skipped the first step, which is browning the chicken before adding it to the rice and broth/coconut milk mixture. I found that it poaches just fine and remains very tender and cooks through easily in the amount of time it takes for the rice to cook and the vegetables to steam. I used the very excellent Le Creuset stock pot given to us as a wedding gift by the very excellent Mr. & Mrs. Corbin to make the dish and clean-up was a snap. There's something about putting that big, beautiful, heavy pot on the stove that just seems to guarantee that comfort food will soon follow. Additionally, since the recipe serves four and I wasn't interested in leftovers, I cut it in half, and there was plenty for the two of us to enjoy. It took about 30 minutes, start to finish: a few minutes to cut up the red pepper and green beans, plus 25 minutes on the stove with very little attention required.

In addition to jasmine rice, the recipe calls for Thai red curry paste. I love the flavor of curry and will be interested to uncover other recipes in which to use it. Because Mr. Fritz isn't one for super spicy foods, I kept the amount I put into the dish to a conservative 1 tsp, but I could see how adding more (the recipe calls for 1-2 tsps) would make the dish even better. If anyone has a can't miss recipe that includes curry paste, please share it in the comments!