Kid friendly chicken curry with mushrooms and spinach

I just love love LOVE homemade curries. They are soooo different from ones made out of jars of sauce, and usually (depends on how good your local one is) better than takeaways – even restaurants mostly. This one is light, healthy, fragrant – and totally child friendly. Mine loved it – asking for more after their first portion (an extremely rare thing, for both of them to like something). I wanted to add sweet potato too, but Adam ‘forgot’ it on his shop run. I don’t actually believe him; he hates sweet potato, so even if he unconsciously forgot it, the fact that he hates it definitely matters. I.e. he has never forgotten beer or wine when on a last minute local shop run…

It would be nice – and heartier – with sweet potato cut into small chunks, so do do that if your partner/family will eat it. Anyhoo, I digress… with or without the orange potato addition, it is a glorious meal, very quick (under 30 mins) and when served with brown rice it really has some proper nutritional whack. I love brown rice – mainly because it is so much easier than white rice to cook. I just do it one part rice to two parts cold water. Pop on lid, bring to boil, simmer until water has gone – about 12-15 mins usually. It also heats up nicely and doesn’t go stodgy like white rice. Leftover brown rice is good stir fried with broccoli the next day and topped with a fried egg – and a dash of Sriracha to finish.

I digress again… I think I actually may have an attention issue. Seriously.

I top my kid friendly curries with chopped fresh red chilies for grown ups, but you feel free to add them at the onions, garlic and ginger fry off stage if adults or brave children are eating. No, I really, actually have an attention problem – I just stopped mid typing to Snapchat a cute/weird teddy that my son made at school. Oh btw, add me on there: rachelbrady79!

Here’s the recipe!

Serves: 4 (2 adults, 2 kids)
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Total time: 25 minutes

Ingredients: 
3 skinless boneless chicken breasts (or thigh meat which would actually be better), cut into chunks
1 tablespoon coconut oil
Bunch of spring onions, sliced
Thumb’s worth of fresh ginger, grated
3 cloves garlic crushed
Bunch coriander stalks (finely chopped)
1 heaped teaspoon of ground coriander
1 teaspoon of turmeric
1 heaped teaspoon garam masala
Small (large handful) punnet of mushrooms, quartered
125g spinach
1 tablespoon of sweet chilli sauce
1 teaspoon of sesame oil
Juice of half a lime
1 can of coconut milk
Fresh coriander

To serve
Fresh red chillies
Fresh coriander leaves
Brown rice
Fresh lime juice

Instructions: 

1. Pop the brown rice on to cook.
2. First add the oil to a large heavy bottom pan. Add the spring onions, ginger, garlic. Soften for 5 minutes.
3. Next add the spices and coriander stalks and fry off for a minute to mellow. Add the chicken and coat for a minute to seal, next the mushrooms, fry for a minute more.
4. Tip in the coconut milk. Bring to the boil. Let the flavours cook together for 10 minutes. Taste. Add the sesame oil, sweet chilli, lime juice and taste again – add the spinach at the very last minute and turn off heat.
5. Serve when you’re happy with brown rice and plenty of chopped fresh red chillies, coriander and more lime juice.