Another random walk in the kitchen

[ellarien]

I thawed out a chicken breast, smeared a half-teaspoon of crushed garlic over it, and put it in the middle-sized casserole dish atop a medley of sweet peppers (plus a bit of jalepeno), yellow squash and mushrooms, sprinkled with cumin, paprika and turmeric (less than a quarter-teaspoon each.) Then I added about a cup of hot water and put it in the oven at 350 for half an hour. Ten minutes later, I also put in the oven the smallest casserole dish, containing a quarter-cup of rice and half a cup of water.

At the end of the cooking time it was all quite nicely done, but the water was excessive in the main dish; I had nearly a cup of nice spicy nutrient-laden water. I threw in a couple of tablespoons of flour, which didn't help, and then a bit of dried mashed potato, which didn't help either. Finally, I slung it in a small pan and heated it for about thirty seconds over a medium-low flame, whereupon it thickened while I was still looking for something to stir it with and became a convincing, if slightly potato-flavored, mild curry sauce.

I've been scared of attempting roux, because of the fiddliness in small quantities; I think this was more along the lines of gravy, and there was probably enough chicken fat in the water to make it work.

I'm quite pleased with this as an experiment; I hadn't tried the rice trick before, and I've never liked cooking rice on the stovetop because of its tendency to boil over and make a horrible starchy mess. (I should probably note that the rice -- the regular long-grain kind -- had been sitting in the water for about 15 min before it went in the oven, for comparison with future efforts.)