Curry and Sweet Potatoes

Yesterday, the weather here finally started to cool down a little. We had some rain, and then some large gusts of wind in the evening. I was hoping for a thunderstorm, but, alas, my wish wasn't granted. The different weather was a nice change at least from the continually hot temperatures we've had lately. As it neared dinnertime, I turned on Pandora and got started on making my kitchen smell delightful!

I'm a big fan of using curry to season recipes, so I thought I'd use it in my experimentation. This recipe was inspired in part by a curry recipe I've made in the past from a cookbook, but I pretty much did my own thing. 

Curry Chicken and Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

4 medium-sized sweet potatoes, peeled 

4 large carrots, peeled

4 roma tomatoes, roughly chopped

1 small onion

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

olive oil

curry powder

garlic powder

salt

garlic salt

*Again, when I make my own creations, I don't do a lot of measuring, so a lot of the ingredient amounts listed are approximations. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, though, because it encourages you to adapt it to your own tastes and take a more active role in your cooking. To those of you who are trying to cook more meals yourself, the more you cook and experiment in the kitchen, the more aware you become of your own seasoning and ingredient preferences. This will help you when you have fresh produce in your house and want to make something from off the top of your head.

Makes 6-8 servings

1. Cube sweet potatoes and carrots

2. Steam carrots. I put them on the stove on low so they would steam slowly as I cook the rest of the dish.

3. Slice chicken into 1" strips. Rub about 1 1/2 tsp. curry powder into chicken. Sprinkle about 1/2 tsp. or more garlic powder and rub it into the chicken. Cut up the chicken the rest of the way into 1" cubes. Put chicken into a pan with a little bit of olive oil and cook. When it's done, drain any excess liquid and set aside. Like the carrots, I also put the chicken on a lower heat setting so they'd slowly cook while I worked on the rest of the recipe (just so I wouldn't have to concentrate on it so much). 

4. Chop up onion and sauté with a little olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. After 3-4 minutes or so, add sweet potatoes. Cook for about 5 more minutes. 

5. Add tomatoes to the saucepan. Cover and let cook for about 10 minutes, or until sweet potatoes are getting soft. 

6. Add carrots, which should be about done by now. It's actually better for them to be a little less than fully done, since they'll be cooked a little more with the sweet potatoes and tomatoes. 

7. At this point, I added some salt (probably about 3/4 T), garlic salt (probably about 1/2 T), and curry powder (about 1-2 T). This is where the measuring was the most sketchy, since I was rushing a bit to finish and I didn't want to bother measuring. I just put the seasonings on, mixed it up, tasted a sweet potato chunk and added more if I felt like it needed more. Trust your own tastes here! Cook for another 3-5 minutes or so, or until sweet potatoes are all the way cooked. 

8. Add chicken, stir up, and serve! 

I ate this plain; however, it would also taste great served with some brown rice or quinoa. Bon appetit!