Emma Sandall's fabulous frugal fare in the spotlight
Emma Sandall is a dancer/choreographer. She and her partner Cass Mortimer Eipper have just set up a dynamic new dance company, Ludwig, with Timothy O'Donnell and Joseph Simons to create innovative works for theatre, advertising and corporate events.
Their original blend of movement and music plus theatricality, sensuality, quirkiness and humour heightens and energises performances of all kinds.
Long hours, a tight budget and the need for a healthy meal to give them the energy they need for rehearsals and performing means that meals have to be planned, not left to chance or whatever scraps are in the fridge. Here's how they do it.
Thai Green Chicken Curry in a Slow Cooker
Cass and I make a slow cooker recipe every week. When we get the proportions right, this lasts us all week long and there are usually leftovers to freeze. We find that these recipes are so tasty that we don't get bored. We just have to decide if we want to have it with rice, noodles or pasta. We do like changing which sort of rice, noodles and pasta we use - there are umpteen varieties to give your food different flavours and textures. By doing this there's always a healthy meal waiting to be heated up when we get home exhausted!
When I cut up the chicken, I like to keep the pieces quite chunky as they will shrink during cooking. I also leave the little bit of fat on the chicken thighs as it keeps the meat juicy. I would rather have a small portion of tasty food than a larger portion of completely "fat free" food.
This chicken curry fed us for a week with a sizeable amount at the end to freeze. It works out at $3.40 a serving with brown rice. We know it would cost a bit less if we made up our own curry paste, but time is really tight these days, so the trade off is paying a little extra for the convenience of a packet mix (we used Trident).
Makes 12 serves
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 4 hours 10 minutes
1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) chicken thigh fillets, cut into chunky pieces
6 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered
1 large carrot, scrubbed and sliced
1 red capsicum, sliced
1 large zucchini, sliced
1 cup (150 g/5 oz) button mushrooms
2-3 chillies, seeded and thinly sliced
2 x 50 g (2 oz) packets Thai Green Curry Paste mix
2 x 400 ml (14 fl oz) cans light coconut milk
1½ cups snow peas, topped and tailed
1 cup frozen baby peas
1/3 cup raw cashews
To serve
Brown rice
Coriander
Tip the chicken chunks into the slow cooker along with the potatoes, carrot, capsicum, zucchini, mushrooms and chilli.
Mix the curry paste with the coconut milk and pour this into the pot. Stir all the ingredients together mixing together well.
Put the slow cooker on for 4 hours and 10 minutes. Our slow cooker only has one setting while some others can be set to low, medium and high. I would imagine that you would want to set your cooker to medium. Forty-five minutes before the end of cooking time, add the snow peas, baby peas and cashews.
Serve with rice and topped with some sprigs of coriander if you like.
Diane's money-saving tips
I quite understand using packet mixes for convenience. It also means you don't have to keep a large range of spices on hand! However, Emma and Cass could save a few dollars by investing in Mae Ploy green curry paste (or red or yellow). These pastes are made in Thailand and are all natural ingredients - no added colourings or preservatives. A 400g container costs around $2 and delivers about 32 serves. We used their red curry paste in our Cheat's seafood laksa.