Round the world curry

My son had the word improvise on his vocabulary list tonight.

“What does that mean again?” he asked me.

“Well,” I said, “remember last night when I promised everyone that I would make curry rice?”

“Yeah.”

“And then after I’d thrown everything into the pot, I discovered that we didn’t have the curry mix and then 10 people showed up for dinner?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that dinner, that was improvising.”

There’s a reason that curry was a popular dish in the 1970s. It stretches. And in the 70s that I grew up in, you could never be sure exactly how many people were showing up for dinner. Turns out some things haven’t changed. (No worries, I’ve managed to lose all the plaid pants my mother dressed me in.) But I still have a house where people just kind of show up. And usually they are sniffing around the stove for dinner.

Last night I had four boneless chicken thighs defrosted. Which seemed fine at 4 pm when the plan was a pot of Japanese curry for my family of six. By 5 pm our crowd had grown to nine.

No prob. More potatoes. I browned the chicken and tossed in the veggies. Then my mom showed up to make it 10. Then I discovered there was no curry mix. Did I mention that five of these people were children? The kind who need dinner, bath and bed or things get out of control fast.

OK, the first thing I thought of was my friend Safa, who tosses cardamom pods, cinnamon sticks and a couple of bay leaves into pretty much everything she cooks. (Except falafel.) And pretty much everything she makes is amazing. (Including falafel.)

So I started there.

In went two cubes of Knorr’s chicken bouillon, two cinnamon sticks, two bay leaves and six cardamom pods. Now what?

I make curries from all over the world. But focus has never been my strong point. Neither has choosing and narrowing things down. Witness the four jobs, yes, that’s right, I just added another one. But hey, curry is forgiving of strange habits (probably another reason it was popular in the 70s.)

Anyway, I rummaged around the many little baggies in the spice bin and found some garam masala. In it went. Things started to smell good. North Africa and India seemed to get along just fine.

A can of tomatoes. The cardamom and cinnamon were really starting to release. Deep and fragrant. What next?

It need more liquid. Well, the whole eclectic curry thing seemed to be working so far, so I tossed in a can of coconut milk. At first it seemed like I’d gone too far. But after it stewed for 30 minutes (hurrah for TMNT videos), things started to mingle nicely. And best of all the pot was looking full.

I chopped a handful of cilantro and sprinkled it on just before serving. A scoop of Japanese rice (remember where we started) and then a couple of ladles of round the world curry. No one went hungry.