This is about the easiest Indian food recipe. At it's most basic, it's just three ingredients -- meat, jarred sauce, yoghurt, and very little time. I usually spruce it up with onions, peppers, garlic and Garam Masala. I'll give the basic recipe below, and then talk about modifications. The pictures are when we made it with chicken sausage from Sam's club, onions, green peppers and cherry pepper.

Basic Ingredients

• 32-oz tub of plain, fat free yoghurt.
• 2 pounds meat: boneless chicken breast, pork loin, pork/chicken/turkey sausage (large links).
• 2 jars of a store-bought Indian sauce. Our preferred sauces are the Bombay and Calcutta simmer sauces from Taj. We get them at what used to be the Knoxville Food Co-op. It has a new name. I'm guessing you can get them also from the Gourmet Market and/or the Fresh Market. Believe it or not, Target sells a Tikka Masala sauce which tastes great, but also has 4 times the calories and fat of the Taj sauces.

Supplemental Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon garam masala (an Indian spice mixture that you buy at most grocery stores).
• 1 onion, cut into thin strips.
• 1/2 a green pepper, cut into thin strips.
• 1-10 jalepeno peppers, seeded and cut into thin strips (after about 2, you'll be able to feel the heat, so scale according to your tastes).
• A couple of cloves garlic, or a tablespoon or two of jarred garlic.
• A head of cilantro, rinsed, stems removed, and chopped coarsely.

The Base Recipe

• Dump the yoghurt onto a paper-towel-lined colander. Let it sit for at least 10 minutes. This will help get some of the water out of the yoghurt, which helps prevent it from separating when you heat it.

• Cut the meat into bite-sized pieces. If you are using sausage, brown it in a frying pan.

• Mix the yoghurt and the jarred sauce. Stir well. Heat a large saucepan or dutch oven, and mix the yoghurt, sauce and meat together. Heat until bubbling and then simmer, partially covered for 15 to 20 minutes, until the meat is cooked.

• You're done.

Tweaking

• If you use garam masala or coriander, mix it with the yoghurt and sauce.
• If you use garlic, onions or peppers, fry them in olive oil, then add the meat and yoghurt/sauce mixture.
• Finally, serve this over a long-grained white rice. The best is Basmati rice. Two cups will do for one recipe. Mix the rice together with the meat stuff so that your leftovers are easy to use -- just heat and eat.

Pictures

The base ingredients: We're using two pounds (ten links) of Spinach and Asiago Cheese Chicken Sausage from Sam's club. We're also using two jars of Taj Calcutta Masala Simmer Sauce. We also have extra ingredients - half a red onion, half a green pepper, a bunch of jarred cherry peppers (which we will slice after removing the seeds). We're also using garam masala (the jar is on the right of the picture).	Katie dumps the yoghurt into the paper towel-lined colandar.	The chicken sausage is much better if you remove the skin. It still holds together for slicing. I make a slit in the entire length of the sausage, then pull off the skin.
The skin is off, and the sausage is cut. Repeat 9 more times.	Fry the sausage in a tablespoon or two of olive oil until it's brown. Only do this with sausage, not with any of the other meats.	The vegetables, cut.
We've removed the sausage, and start sauteing the vegetables.	In the meanting, we mix the yoghurt and simmer sauces, and stir well.	The vegetables are done -- now we mix the rest of the stuff in.
Katie stirs.	The finished product. Yum.	We've mixed in two cups of cooked Basmati rice, so that we can store it in serving-sized containers in the refrigerator.