love you in the kitchen: chicken curry puffs

today was a wonderful (but HOT) day. I was able to attend a potluck picnic in washington square park with the Big Girls Small Kitchen / Small Kitchen College girls. Everyone was so lovely and the food was absolutely delicious. I have a bunch of new dishes that I cannot wait to test out on my own. How did I go 22 years without trying gazpacho? Oh, and I got to try this dirty chai ice cream. Insanity. So delicious and refreshing on a scorching hot day.

I thought up this recipe for chicken curry puffs & tried it out this afternoon. Luckily I really loved it and decided to bring it to the potluck. I chronicled the process of it for the blog and also for reference. Hey maybe you'll like it too! CURRY RULES.

What you'll need:

-chicken breasts

-one large yellow onion

-2 tbsp of butter

-lots of olive oil

-salt & pepper

-3 garlic cloves chopped

(or a decent amount of garlic powder if that's how you roll)

-curry powder

- One pack of pastry puff sheets (from the frozen food aisle)

-1 cup of coconut milk

- 1/2 tbsp red pepper flakes

1- First you're going to want to pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees. Spread the chicken breasts out on a well greased/oiled baking sheet evenly and put a sprinkling of salt, pepper & curry powder (just a bit.) on each breast. Eyeball the spices according to how much flavor you want. (Remember: Curry powder is very strong but the coconut milk will dilute the strength a bit.)

2- As the chicken breasts are cooking (this usually takes about 45 minutes.), chop up your yellow onion. Make sure the onion is being chopped up somewhat small since they will need to fit in a tiny pastry puff!

3- Add the 2 tbsp of butter in a heated decent sized saucepan and a bit of olive oil. Once the two are hot and bubbling a bit, add the onion to the pan. Add salt, pepper & red pepper flakes and stir until the onions are translucent

4. Once the onions are getting somewhat caramelized, add 1 1/2 tbsp of curry powder. Immediately after, stir in the coconut milk.

5. Stir all of the ingredients together and let the sauce simmer on low.

6. By this time, your chicken should be ready. Leave the oven on 400 degrees still. Let the meat cool off a bit and then put the pieces onto a cutting board. Take a fork and knife and shred the chicken. Baking the chicken makes the meat very tender, so shredding should be easy. Throw the meat into the simmering sauce & stir together so everything is evenly coated.

7. While the curry/chicken filling is simmering, get your pastry puff sheets ready. Cut the dough from the sheets into small squares (enough to fold over once the filling is placed onto the dough) and place onto a well greased (but not TOO greasy! i just drizzled olive oil onto some parchment paper and it worked just fine) baking sheet. Make as many squares as you feel is necessary for the amount of puffs you want.