Right. Well, I'm just going to go ahead and say Complexity wins this one unless someone else seriously throws down but hey. I made the food and took the pictures.

COUNTRY CAPTAIN

Pretty much "white people slave food." Why the hell it's called a "country captain" since it's basically creole curry is the subject of much debate. Charleston lays claim to it, as does Savannah. We're making the Savannah recipe here, because Garden and Gun is the shit, as I've mentioned several times before. Best guess: someone southern learned it from someone who had been in India, where it was called something that sounded vaguely like "Country Captain". This is how even jodhpur-wearing Colonials can come to call milagu thanni "mulligatawny." Granted - there's no part of the Triangle Trade that touched on India. So perhaps this is some of the only Southern cuisine that isn't dependent on slavery. Whatever. I technically live in Westchester (I type this 20 feet from the Playa Del Rey border in two directions) and my home Depot is in Compton so if I want "black history food" it's way easier to buy than make. There is nothing I can make that Pann's can't make better, which is ironic 'cuz Pann's was started by a guy with the last name "Panagopoulos." Anyway. Eight steps, eh? Let's see.

1. Un-chicken the chicken

This is a chicken. It is not in useful format.

10 minutes later:

With salt'n'pepper:

Not shown: the part where I take the chicken fat and skin I don't want to eat and render it down in the frying pan. yes, you should use bacon grease but since you don't taste anything bacon with this (although sometimes I'll get my grease by frying a little bacon and then using it to garnish - more in a minute) I just rendered me down some chicken fat.

2. Curry Powder.

As with all curries, the fresher the better. I don't have a rippin' load of fresh spices handy and I'm still sick and besides, I forgot a lot of shit on this so oopsie.

Yes, that is a coffee grinder. Typically I put the hard shit in there (cinnamon stick, coriander, cumen seed, cardamom, clove) and whack it then put the soft shit in and blend it. This time I forgot the clove and put the coriander in last so I had to schlep it all out of the grinder, nuke the coriander then blend. yes, you end up with like half a cup of curry powder. No, it doesn't fuck up your coffee the next morning. That's because I have a Mr. coffee, which you can wash, as opposed to that bullshit Krups thing that is completely useless for everything.

3. Veggie chop

I've mentioned before I'm deathly allergic to green peppers. So I cut them big. If you're cutting peppers big, cut onions big. If you're cutting onions big, cut... whoops. Forgot to buy celery. As mentioned, sick. Hey, I remembered the serrano. Which for some reason doesn't do anything to me.

Ooops. Let's get the canned tomatoes in there for a beauty shot as well.

4. Fry Fry Fry

So the chicken we've been browning? Yeah, mostly we're going to poach it but we needed a sear. So out it comes. In with the seary bits go the veggies. in with the seary bits go the free world supply of curry powder.

The recipe calls for cooking the veg until it's "soft" but FFS - we're going to boil this shit for half an hour so I mostly just let it rawk then add the tomatoes and chicken stock.

5. Cookie cookie cook

Now that the veg is curried and the sauce is started, we put the chicken back in.

And ignore it for half an hour. You could probably go 20 minutes; chicken is done at 165 and when you boil it for 30 minutes it's at like 180 but hey - we were putting the kid to bed so it went 45 and didn't suffer. But in that 45 you can do other things like

6. Garnish

All sortsa shit is suggested for Country Captain. I gleefully endorse the following:

Not pictured:

A) Scallions (forgot)

B) Bacon (too lazy)

C) Sour cream/plain greek yogurt (thought we had some; we didn't)

D) candied pecans (too fiddly by half)

Now that that's good, let's get to

7. Rice

Not pictured. I have a rice cooker. It cooks rice. It takes about 20 minutes, then keeps it hot for a week. After 48 hours it's half glue, half toenails so eat it in the first 24. And now we're ready for

8. Plate

Note that you've got a chicken ($13 for organic), a bell pepper ($1.50 organic), an onion ($0.75), a shit-ton of spices (~$30 but you can make like 10 recipes worth with all of it - I mean, 2TBSP of cinnamon - so let's call it $3), a serrano (legit four cents), a can of tomatoes ($2) and some rice ($1/lb; this is about half a pound of rice) and it'll make about three meals for two. That's about three bucks a meal.

But it isn't half as awesome as Complexity's.