I cooked. Seriously

Here's the evidence, right next to the picture from the cookbook:

Not exactly the same ...

Moving to rural northern Michigan from New York City has its ups and downs.

Considering I'm not from this area, upon finding out I spent a number of years living in big cities, people always wonder how -- and why -- I ended up here. There really is more to it than I wanted to live by Lake Michigan (though not much), but that's another story for another day.

Today's story is about curry.

Aside from missing my friends like crazy, there is very little about my choice to move that I'm not satisfied with on a daily basis. The pace of life here is comfortably laid back, the cost of living is so much beyond cheaper I can't even begin to describe ... and did I mention Lake Michigan?

But, I miss my friends and I miss going to watch them be talented. I miss the diversity of New York. And I so incredibly miss the food.

I was never in a position where I could afford to go out to eat much. Not proper-like, at least. But, there was a lot of take out in my life. And a lot of variety.

And I recently realized it has been three years since I ate Indian food -- and I don't mean the casino buffet. Not Native American Indian, I mean the kind of Indian from India.

So, here is the retelling of my first attempt at real cooking.

I've cooked other stuff, but never anything more complicated than pounding and flouring a pork chop, opening a can of green beans and throwing together one of those boxes of au gratin potatoes (a delicious meal, mind you, but not exactly a challenge).

The recipe I used was from a cookbook I picked up in the grocery store last year. I love cookbooks (pretty hysterical, considering last night was the first time I actually used one), and this was one of those glorified magazines, all about chicken. Well, what did I have to lose?

There were several things in the recipe I didn't have in my cupboard, so I made my shopping list and went the the grocery store. I'm hoping, through these cooking experiments I intend to do, I'll be able to build my cupboards into something that is somewhat functional. Something where, if I want to make a recipe, I don't have to go out and spend a ton of money collecting ingredients I've never heard of before.

The recipe said the prep time for this was 8 minutes and the cook time 24 minutes (did I mention the cookbook is "quick and easy" recipes?), which is actually kind of funny because I spent over two hours on this meal. Given the fact that I didn't start cooking until after midnight and hadn't really sat down all day, I was really tired by the time I ate (between 2:30 and 3!).

There were some really interesting moments in the process -- like when I wondered how I got the knobbly thing that was under the sign at the grocery store that said "ginger" to look like something that belonged in a sauce.

These Internets really are a wonder, because all I had to do was Google "how to chop ginger" and click on the first thing I saw. On that page, there was a link showing how to peel ginger, which apparently is the first step of chopping it. This trick with the spoon is brilliant, so I copied the link: http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Peeling-Ginger/Detail.aspx.

I noticed some of the time frames in the recipe were pretty short, like adding ingredients then adding more ingredients two minutes later, so I decided to prepare everything in separate bowls, putting the stuff together that needed to be added at the same time.

Perhaps this sounds a little elementary, but this cooking stuff is terrifying business, and I really thought this whole process out.

My favorite part was adding the spices, because the recipe said to "cook until fragrant." There was no doubt what that meant. It smelled so delicious in my house, I couldn't help but hope that was some sort of good sign of what was to come.

I have to say, the entire process was pretty entertaining. I did do some things wrong, though.

The sauce ended up being way too thin, and I think there were two factors involved. The recipe called for frozen spinach, thawed, and said to squeeze out the excess water. I don't think I did a good enough job with this. My hands got really cold, and I was already over an hour into the process and getting hungry. But, rushing is not worth ruining the giant vat of sauce. The other factor was, I mistakenly used diced can tomatoes instead of crushed. I'm wondering if crushed might give it a thicker consistency.

There was one other issue with this. It said to stir the chicken into this mess, and cover simmering for 10 minutes. The chicken most certainly wasn't done that quickly. And besides, doing it the way the recipe said sort of created this boiled chicken that had kind of a squishy consistency.

I've decided the next time I make something like this, I'm going to brown the chicken a little first, and then finish cooking it in the sauce. I think that would work a lot better.

In the end, it tasted pretty good. I love cumin. I didn't realize that until yesterday. But, it wasn't spicy enough, and as I mentioned, it was really too thin. But, I'll keep searching for the recipe that reminds me of sitting on my office floor in New York with Ann at midnight the night before the big hair show, eating curry and complaining about how much work we still had to do.

I'll still miss my friends. In some ways, I'll still miss New York.

But, this week, I won't be missing curry.