Chicken and Fruit in Curry Sauce

I was thinking about the rut I sometimes get into with cooking - when I have four or five dinners that rotate through my life and palate - and I forget some of the previous favourites.

So feeling a bit directionless gullet wise, I started digging through the cookbook collection, looking for those with broken spines.

My first entry in this collection is from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. It was a gift, and while I was nomadic, it was one of the few cookbooks not packed away, so it got a good thumbing through.

And the book started falling open at two places: the first - how to carve a turkey (which I think like pain, I keep wiping from my memory) the second - a happy rediscovery of an old standby - chicken curry. No, it's not from a real Indian cookbook, but it's got such a great twist and is so fast, it's worthy of a broken spine.

So, this book is now double jointed, partly because of how often I've made this but mostly because it's a hefty 944 pages (I guess because of a need to live up to the title).

Chicken and Fruit in Curry Sauce - adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 cup sliced onion

2 tbsp curry powder

2 cups peeled and chunked apples, bananas, papayas, or mixture (I also use raisins and mango if available)

1 cup peeled, cored and chopped tomatoes

2 boneless chicken breasts cut into 1 1/2" chunks, I use boneless chicken thighs

Heat the oil and add the onion, when softened (and not brown), add the curry powder and stir for one minute. Add the fruit, tomatoes and chicken. Cook, covered for five minutes on medium low heat. Remove the cover and raise the heat. Cook the chicken through and thicken the sauce.

Serve with basmati rice.

For four...

Enjoy.