Slow Cookers and Simple Curries

My default rule, when trying a new recipe "as written," is to double all of the spices for my jaded palate. That worked pretty well for the Crockpot Butter Chicken I bookmarked from the New York Times this summer, and finally cooked when Chicago winter started coming.

My modification:

• Chop 3.5 lb. of chicken breasts into chunks (I cut each breast into eight pieces) and put them in your Crockpot.

• Dice two small onions in the cuisinart, then saute them lightly while you turn back and dice six cloves of garlic and round up 6 tbsp of ginger. (You could dice fresh ginger, but I don't usually have it on hand, so I used pre-chopped ginger from my freezer.) Add these to the pan and saute another few minutes.

• Add a small (6 oz.) can of tomato paste and 2 tbsp of garam masala, plus 2 tsp of salt. Stir it up again. Pour the whole thing over the chicken, along with the juice of half a lemon, 2 tsp of lime zest, and about a cup of coconut milk. Stick it on high for 5 hours.

Overall, pretty good, especially with some hot sauce and greek yogurt over rice.

N.B.: I don't believe in using the "low" setting of my Crockpot after reading a Cooks Illustrated article concluding that "low" and "high" cook at basically the same temperature, except that high gets to that temperature faster -- and therefore, I think, is probably slightly better from a food safety point of view.

Also I must confess, I don't love my Crockpot. My dreams of having easy, no-fuss dinner waiting for me every day when I get home never quite seem to come true. It usually takes too much prep to get everything going; some things (like beans) always end up too watery; it's always a pain to clean, even in the dishwasher; the insert is heavy and hard to handle, especially when hot. And yet I keep using it, month after month, including twice this weekend. It may be the most unrewarded workhouse of my kitchen.