Country Captain or East India Chicken Curry

From Joy of Cooking, Rombauer and Becker, 1995 edition, p. 428. The following words, correspondingly, are not mine.

4 Servings.

This dish has become a favorite in America, although it probably got its name not from the sea captain who brought the recipe back to our shores, but from the Indian officer who first made him acquainted with it. So says Cecily Brownstone, a great friend; this is her time-tested formula. For still another oriental chicken curry, see Rijsttafel, 211.

Cut into pieces:

A fryer Coat them with:
Seasoned Flour, 552 Brown the chicken in:
1/4 cup butter
Remove, drain, and place in a casserole. Simmer gently in the pan drippings until golden:
1/4 cup finely diced onions
1/2 cup finely diced green pepper, seeds and membrane removed
1 minced garlic clove
1 1/2 to 3 teaspoons curry powder
1/2 teaspoon thyme
Add:
2 cups stewed or canned tomatoes
and simmer until the pan is deglazed.
Pour this sauce over the chicken and bake uncovered about 40 minutes or until the chicken is tender. During the last 5 minutes of cooking, add:
3 tablespoons currants
Serve with:
Boiled Rice, 206
garnished with:
Toasted slivered almonds

Chicken in Curry Sauce (heh heheheheh, it said sauce)

Now, Brian and John's Midnight Gourmet(TM) took a look at the above recipe and proudly proclaimed, "What the hell is a fryer." Never mind that this statement, which is clearly in the interrogative case as opposed to the declarative case one would expect to find in a proclamation, is defeatist and ignorant-sounding, and probably not proud at all. And never mind that Brian knows perfectly well that a fryer is a medium-size whole chicken. But it was in character, let me assure you -- we didn't have a so-called "fryer", and there was no way we were going to go back to Marsh's and buy one, especially because we were waiting for our Curried Rice to cook. Besides, we had all this extra chicken already waiting around, conveniently thawed for our cooking pleasure. So we decided to have a little fun with the recipe:

quickly

1/4 cup finely diced onions
1/2 cup finely diced green pepper, seeds and membrane removed
1 minced garlic clove
1 1/2 to 3 teaspoons curry powder
2 cups stewed or canned tomatoes
Add:
1/2 teaspoon thyme
Obtain:
3 chicken breasts (We only had two. But there was way too much sauce; 3 would have been better, I think.)
Brown them in:
1/4 cup butter
While they are cooking, add the sauce. Watch it fizzle. Smell it; doesn't it smell tasty? Poke and flip the chicken bits until they are done, or until you are bored, whichever tastes better.
Serve with
Curried Rice
Or don't; it's your dinner.

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Brian R. Gaeke