Around football season it’s not uncommon for my husband to walk in the door with charcoal and ribs in hand, and announce, “People are coming over in half an hour. It’s a big game.” It’s always a big game. I
Around football season it’s not uncommon for my husband to walk in the door with charcoal and ribs in hand, and announce, “People are coming over in half an hour. It’s a big game.”
It’s always a big game.
I can usually scramble to throw clothes in the hamper, throw chips in a bowl, throw my hostess hat on and have a great time. However, nobody can throw a better party than my friend Nancee. In between the sports soirees this time of year, she hosts her annual curry party, a celebrated occasion.
I met Nancee years ago when I started working at her store, Island Hemp & Cotton in Kapa’a. Nearly every week someone would enter the shop looking for her, as I was steaming a silk dress or rearranging the jewelry in the glass case. Often it would be a long-lost friend from Europe passing through, or a childhood chum who had just sailed over to Kauai from the mainland, or an acquaintance who needed advice on where to stay in Java. “Who don’t you know?” I would ask her. “And where haven’t you been?”
Nancee grew up in Saudi Arabia, went to boarding school in Switzerland, was married in Lebanon, and gave birth to her first child in Ethiopia. She has sailed around the Greek Isles, hiked in Bhutan and Nepal, and visited more countries than you can count on both hands and both feet. It’s no wonder she knows how to get along with people. She has also picked up an abundance of treasures over the years, one of them being her curry recipe from Southern India, the key element for her curry parties.
Just recently Nancee threw another one of these parties. They go like this: She makes the curry, and everyone who attends brings a condiment to go with it, which completes the one-dish meal. That’s it. Well, there are also impromptu concerts by professional musicians, blazing bonfires, dogs leaping about the beach with sandy muzzles, kids swaying on handmade driftwood swings, but that’s it for the food. Attending a potluck party is good. Attending a party where all you bring is a condiment is great. And you may even get lucky and be asked to bring something like peanuts. A bag of peanuts? How easy is that?
When all of the seemingly disparate condiments are added to the curry, the flavors all come together somehow to create a complex, delicious meal. As I sprinkled shredded coconut on my mounded plate, a fellow party-goer said, “It’s amazing you can get this many different condiments together on one plate and make it work; kind of like all the people in this room.”
He was right.
Nancee’s
Chicken Curry
Serves 6 to 8 people generously
2 diced tomatoes
2 diced onions
2 diced apples
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 quart of chicken stock
Handful of flour
1 can of coconut milk
1/2 cup of raisins
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 pound cooked, diced chicken (optional)
Add tomatoes, onions, and apples in a large pot, cook until soft. Add curry powder and chicken stock, adding flour to thicken. Simmer for 10 minutes. Add coconut milk, raisins, tomato paste and chicken. Simmer for 45 minutes.
Serve with rice and the following condiments: Pineapple chunks, Shredded coconut, Diced tomatoes, Sliced bananas, Slivered almonds, Crumbled hard boiled egg, Mild chutney, Hot chutney, Diced green onions, Crumbled bacon and Peanuts.
• Lois Ann Ell is a freelance writer who lives in Kapa‘a.
