A sensitive palate

You will be happy to know that I did eat what I cooked for lunch - well, kinda.

I have had these spice packets sitting in my cupboard and I wanted to use them.

I picked the one on the left for lunch.

I followed the recipe on the back - but I cut it by 1/4 because I was using just one chicken breast. And this is why I usually just make my own food from scratch - this spice packet was for six servings.


What the heck would I do with five leftover servings of chicken tikka masala? If I was the kind of person that was perfectly happy eating the same thing day after day - sure - making big portions to have for later would make sense.


But I digress...


The start of the recipe:

Minced ginger, diced onion and minced garlic.

I cooked some basmati rice in a sauce pot while the aromatics cooked in a saute pan on medium heat.


The spice packet went in next - then the cubed chicken. I poured in about 1 cup of the Muir Glen tomato sauce and 1/4 cup of water. 


It ended up looking very pretty.

And the first few bites were delicious - spicy but not hot. But then it hit - a bloom of strong bitterness. Ugh((


For some reason, I have a palate that is very sensitive to the taste of cloves. To me, this spice doesn't have much of a taste other than a horrendously strong acrid flavor.


I took another look at the ingredients and there it was:

Oh, well. Live and learn. I should have looked more closely at the ingredients when I bought it. It also explains why I have never liked the taste of garam masala which also contains cloves.

I ended up scraping most of the sauce off the chicken and eating it with the plain rice.

I have higher hopes for the spice packet for green beans (the packet on the right) which doesn't contain cloves. 

I will be making that one for dinner.