Yes! It's A Recipe Post!!

But before we get to it, some blatant begging. I've entered a competition at kidspot.com.au to win a new car. A Nissan X-Trail Ti to be precise. In order to be in the running I need votes for the photo I entered - it's the kids in the car at 6am on a sunny summer's morning ready for a road trip. Just click on the link - http://bit.ly/PbQKWY -  and it'll take you to my pic where you can press the button to vote. You can vote once each day and at the moment I'm sitting in 27th place so I'd really, really, really appreciate your votes. And just think, if I had a fabbo new car I'd be able to go more places and then I'd have more stuff to blog about. Wins all round!

And onto the cooking...

I ripped my way through a few cooking magazines over the weekend. Quite literally. And came up with a bundle of new recipes to try. I've been a bit slack in the cooking department of late - getting in late from work means I've got to be super organised for those nights and, quite frankly the rest of the week I'm trying to keep up with the kids, the house and everything elseand not a lot of energy is left for playing in the kitchen. We still have proper, good, nutritional meals but we're seeing a fairly high rotation of the same meals.

But having a little bundle of new recipes for insiration got my cooking mojo fired up and I tried out one for dinner tonight. It was quick to throw together, super simple and I had almost everything on hand. This is what the finished product was supposed to look like. Pretty, yes? Yeah, you'll see what mine looked like in a minute.

A few notes: not being a big curry fan, I used only 1 tablespoon of the curry paste and that worked just fine for me. I left the pineapple out altogether. I used frozen corn instead of baby corn and green capsicum not red because that was what I had. I think this needed a bit more moisture as the rice wasn't totally cooked through (but cooked enough!) and could have done with another few minutes but was getting dry. I'd add maybe another half cup of water and cook it for another 10 or so minutes. And with all those extra instructions... this really was yummy. With the notable exception of little Miss Fussy, aka Offspring #2, we all liked it and I'd make it again.

One-Pot Red Curry Chicken and Rice

from Super Food Ideas, July 2012

Serves 6

500g chicken thigh fillets, trimmed, cut into 3cm pieces

2 tablespoons red curry paste

2 cups Jasmine rice (I just used regular white rice)

1 brown onion, finely chopped

1/2 of a 440g can pineapple thins, drained, chopped

1 red capsicum, chopped

125g baby corn, diagonally sliced

400ml can coconut milk

1 cup boiling water

1/3 cup frozen peas

fresh coriander leaves, to serve.

1. Preheat oven to 200C. Place chicken in a bowl. Add curry paste. Stir until well coated. Refrigerate for 20 minutes, if time permits.

2. Place rice in an 8-cup capacity baking dish. Top with onion, pineapple, capsicum and corn. Pour over coconut milk and boiling water. In a single layer, arrange chicken on top. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 10 minutes.

3. Uncover. Bake for a further 30 to 35 minutes or until chicken is cooked through and rice is tender. Remove from oven. Sprinkle with peas. Stand, covered for 5 minutes or until peas are heated through. Serve topped with coriander.