Lower-fat, no-coconut korma

I found a recipe I wanted to try from a slow-cooker cookbook in my collection, one that promised delicious curry slow-cooker style. It was a chicken korma with a coconut milk base, thickened with ground toasted almonds. "Lite" coconut milk still isn't light enough to make the cut in my diet, and there are already ground almonds in the recipe, so I thought, "why not kill two birds with one stone? I'll make almond milk instead of using coconut milk and then I'll have ground almonds to use for the thickener."

Lorna Sass offers a delicious almond milk recipe from the 1400s in To the King's Taste: Richard II's book of feasts and recipes adapted for modern cooking. That almond milk is sweetened, which I didn't want, so I changed things up a little in my most recent almond milk.

The most fun part about making the almond milk comes after Step 1: blanch whole almonds, drain, rinse with cold water, drain. Then I get to squeeze them until the almonds pop right out of the skins. The flying almonds have a surprising velocity when they hit the bowl. Sometimes they leap right out of it. For this recipe, since it was going to cook down for a long time, I made a rather thin almond milk by putting 1/2 cup almonds and 2 cups water into my blender to whirl until the almonds were ground and the water was white. I strained out the almonds to add to the curry later in the cooking.

I also decided there was no reason why I couldn't, when I didn't want to wait four hours for dinner, make the dish on the stove in about an hour. 

The rest of the recipe:

No-coconut chicken korma 
serves four to six

Almond milk made with 1/2 cup almonds and 2 cups water, ground almonds strained out
2 Tbsp butter or ghee
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into bite-size pieces
1 onion, chopped
4 green cardamom pods, cracked
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 dash ground turmeric
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp ground chilies
1/2 cup chicken stock, if more liquid desired
1 Tbsp lime juice
1 tsp garam masala
salt and ground black pepper to taste

Heat ghee/butter in a pan and cook chicken pieces until they start to brown. Fry onion for a few minutes, then add cardamom pods and garlic and fry 2 minutes. Add ground almonds, cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon stick, ground chilies and cook about one minute until fragrant. Add liquids and simmer until chicken is cooked through. Stir in the citrus juice and garam masala and cook until liquid has thickened and reduced to your liking. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Serving suggestion: spoon curry over saffron rice -- rice sauteed in butter/ghee and then steamed in water with a pinch or two of saffron for color and flavor
Garnish suggestion: toasted sliced almonds