I’ve been a fan of curry pastes for a long time, as well as a fan of buying ingredients in bulk for cost savings.
I don’t just buy curry pastes in bulk. Potatoes, too, as well as chicken thighs when there’s a big sale.
Somehow, and I don’t know how, I alighted on the idea to combine all three of these things. It may have started with pan-fried potatoes, or maybe with oven baked chicken thighs (skin on, bone in). It may have its genesis in yellow curry fried rice, where I first learned that the (Thai) curry paste works incredibly well as a seasoning.
Before I go any further, I need to mention that this dish goes really well with at least tzatziki, and probably zhug as well.
Yellow curry paste!
Irregardless of how it happened, I then used yellow curry paste (the mildest of the pastes) as a seasoning for pan fried potatoes. All of this is being done in a cast-iron skillet, of course.
Finally, I decided that the best of all worlds is to put the chicken thighs on top of the potatoes, and maybe a few other vegetables and then bake to allow the juices and fat to seep into the potatoes, mingling the flavors.
The problem with chicken thighs is they take a long time to cook at a high temperature. It’s not so much a problem as something you need to be aware of going into the cooking process.
(Continued after the jump)