Educating Mary: Country Captain Chicken

Do you have any Kevin Bacon dishes in your head? The ones that seem to keep popping up everywhere and are somehow referenced by everyone you know, pushing you into a tailspin of wonder, confusion and hunger. I feel that way about Country Captain Chicken.

This week's Educating Mary lesson is a classic Southern chicken stew long associated with Savannah, Georgia. (Savannah was an important part of the spice trade in early american history and a cool city to visit if you are up for beauty and history around every corner.) Some say that a British sea captain in from India brought the recipe. Country Captain combines tender chicken in a sauce that's flavored with onions, garlic, bell peppers, and thyme, slightly spicy from curry powder, paprika, and cayenne, a little sweet from raisins and mango, and bright from tomatoes. It is a one-dish wonder and I wanted my first attempt to be a recipe worthy of my time/money/effort. I found a great recipe here that includes a homemade spice rub and coconut rice. Look past the 37 separate ingredients and you will see that it is actually pretty easy to create. I made the spice rub the night before I am getting more and more tempted to invest in a tiny coffee grinder dedicated specifically for spices.

This dish does not disappoint. The chicken had a lot of flavor and spice and the coconut rice provided a nice, creamy counterpoint in the dish. The spice mix made about double what I needed so I have it all set up for the next time I whip this up. I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz as she goes behind the curtain to see the wizard and sees the truth. So many dishes appear exotic or difficult, but very little is that hard if you break it up into manageable steps. Happy eating and I will see you next week with a cool market round-up of some of my new must-haves.