plonq | Weekend culinary follies

It seems like a pretty simple plan on paper.

atara will make some of her world-famous spätzle, I'll whip up some curry Thai chicken with rice, and we'll combine efforts on a dozen devilled eggs.

Jump ahead to Saturday afternoon.  The potluck dinner is that evening and we haven't even gone shopping yet, let alone begun the process of cooking.  We make a ~~quick~~ run over to the ~~store~~ zoo to pick up what we need.  I can't find any of the red curry paste that I need, but I'm sure that I have some at home.

I don't.

Ack!

Fuck!

Now I'm stumped over what to do with a couple pounds of chicken, a couple cans of coconut milk, bamboo shoots...  In the back of my mind I'd been mulling over alternate plans in case something went awry with my Thai recipe, and I quickly move to implement these plans.

Plan 1: Panic.... done.

Plan 2: Make some other kind of curry with the chicken.  I have a couple jars of curry paste in the fridge, but I have a quick look in the cupboard to see what else there is.

First option is the Molé Pronto that I'd been saving for no apparent reason.  The only problem is that the jar would only make enough for half of the chicken that I bought.  When I check the next cupboard I find a jar of butter chicken sauce that I had forgotten about.  Yum!   Add sauce... add milk... cook!  I think I can handle that.

The next crisis comes when we try to make the devilled eggs.  For some reason these chicken embryos are very attached to their shells.  For every egg that peels right, there are two that end up being pocked, cratered disasters.  What's worse, it's taking forever to peel these things and we're running late already.  Finally we discuss the matter and decide to yiff the eggs (figuratively) and just run with the butter chicken and spätzle.  In the end that works out fine since there is an abundance of food at the party.