Midway through the photo shoot for this post, my camera died. Or at least its battery died. I misplaced the charger last week and have been frantically searching for it without luck. I know it’s got to be around here somewhere, but I swear that I’ve looked everywhere. My hope was that it would hold out just a smidge longer – at least until all the photos for this recipe were taken. But it took about 8 photos, then gave out.

So I pulled out my old point and shoot to see what I could come up with. One of the photos in this post were taken with the P&S; the other two with my Canon dSLR. Can you tell which one was the P&S?

It’s fitting then, that this post is about “do-overs”. Frigidaire asked if I’d recreate a version of a recipe that I’ve made in the past that was, er…less than successful. I knew immediately which recipe it would be.

As you all know, I didn’t pick up a pan or chef’s knife until my first daughter was born. That’s literally when I began teaching myself how to cook and I had almost no idea what I was doing. A friend gave me a “3-ingredient cookbook” which I thought was absolutely perfect. Who could mess up a dish with only three ingredients?

Apparently, I could.

Three ingredients: Chicken, curry powder, plain yogurt. Mix the last two together, pour over chicken and bake.

Yeah…about that…I didn’t know anything about ethnic ingredients at that stage in my cooking career – I didn’t know much about any ingredients, for that matter – but how hard could it be? So off to the market I went to pick up my three ingredients. I mixed them together, poured them over the chicken, put it in the oven, and waited.

Alan arrived just before it was finished and the house smelled divine. I proudly pulled the finished dish from the oven and we began eating. As soon as I took one bite, I started choking and gasping…I gulped down an entire glass of water, immediately poured another and drank that one too. I looked over at Alan through my watery eyes and saw that he was quietly chewing his first bite.

“You don’t have to eat that, you know. I won’t be offended. It’s terrible – please…spit it out. It’s okay!”

“It’s not that bad.” And he didn’t spit it out. He ate every last bite and didn’t complain once!

Now, you’ll probably say that I have one amazing husband. And you’d be right – I know how lucky I am. But I also think that he really, really wanted me to learn to cook so that we weren’t eating mac ‘n cheese for the rest of our lives. And so, he suffered through it.

Turns out that curry powder and curry paste are two very different things. The recipe called for powder and I bought red curry paste, a very concentrated product that is extremely spicy when used in larger quantities. I can tell you from experience that interchanging the two is not a good idea. Trust me on this one.

I’ve used curry paste – and powder – countless times since then and love them both. But I wanted to use it again for my do-over recipe since it’s the one dish that we still laugh about to this day. And since Father’s Day is Sunday, I thought Alan would appreciate something made in his honor. I thought shrimp was a little more upscale and Alan loves peanut sauce, so this was a no-brainer. I have a feeling he’ll like this recipe much better!

So please enjoy this easy recipe! Just be careful when buying your ingredients ;-)