Cooking dinner as I write

We're having friends over for dinner tonight. I like making everything in advance so that I don't have to fuss when guests arrive.

Bubbling away in the slow cooker right now is a kid-friendly chicken curry, which has transmogrified from a recipe for tagine, so let's call it a stew. Recipe for a big batch: one layer of potato chunks on bottom of slow cooker. One layer of big carrot chunks. Then toss chicken thighs (~2 kg) in flour and brown in batches in a frypan, then place on top of vegetables in slow cooker. In the frypan, fry 4 onions and 4-6 garlic cloves (amount depends on how comfortable you are sharing garlic breath with your visitors). Then add 2 teaspoons each of cumin, coriander, turmeric; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; a titch of chili; salt; and a couple of cardomon pods if you have them. Add ~3 cups of stock to the onions in the pan (today I also added some shmushed-up leftover pumpkin). Bring to boil, then pour this oniony spicy liquid over everything in the slow cooker. Cook for a while (4-6 hours on low in my large oval slow cooker). If you're feeling fancy, sprinkle with fresh coriander.

I plan to serve the curry/stew/tagine with rice and briefly blanched asparagus and broccoli.

For dessert: apple, blackberry and raspberry crumble (crisp). I used frozen berries; isn't their icy purpleness gorgeous against the Granny smith green?