Unserious Blog Post
Okay, let’s talk about recipes.
Sad time: Growing up in an abusive home without much access to food, I didn’t really learn much about cooking. So, once I was an adult, I got The Joy of Cooking and decided it was like a Bible. This is like the Normal People Manual. If I do what it says in here, I will cook like Normal People.
Flint’s family was generally very snooty, so that actually didn’t generate a lot of guffaws from them. Case in point: I knew what creme fraiche tasted like, and how to prepare it, before I knew how to make tacos or a lazy stir-fry.
So, when I divorced Flint and struck out on my own, suddenly I looked through the Joy of Cooking and was like, “I don’t have time for this shit!” I had to figure out how to cook like a real person now, somebody who just wanted food and didn’t want an ego or identity served up along with it. I’ve had a lot of trouble doing this. The recipe is God. Not using the recipe ensures FAILURE. OH MY GOD. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO COOK
About a year ago, my bear got me . You guys, go get this book. This is just an encyclopedia of ingredients. You open up to one ingredient, and underneath it is a list of ingredients that go with it. The ones that go with it well are bolded. The ones that you are CRAZY not to use are in ALL CAPS AND BOLDED WITH ASTERISKS*****!!!!! Every time I want to cook, I just look at what we have, or I think of an ingredient I really want, I look it up, and that becomes my grocery list. Then I put all that in a pan and, boom, I have a dinner that reliably tastes fantastic. All the rest of the stuff — presentation, amounts, cooking methods — can be tweaked so much easier once I have a list of ingredients and don’t have to panic with, “BUT WHAT IF I PUT THYME IN IT WOULD THAT RUIN IT WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE.”
So, unserious time: here are some recipes I have made up with The Flavor Bible.
Turkey and Rice Covered With Green Stuff
In a blender, put:
Tons of basil
Some spinach
Orange juice
Garlic
Parmesan
Maybe a little olive oil
In a pan, put:
Ground turkey
Some cherry tomatoes
Some mushrooms
Maybe onions
In a pot, make some rice
Cook the turkey, tomatoes, and mushrooms.
Pour the green stuff on top of it.
Pour that on some rice.
Fucking dinner.
Salmon and Bulghur with Strawberries and Walnuts
Cook some salmon in a pan. Maybe with butter, maybe with olive oil.
Add some baby carrots.
Add some scallions.
Cook up some bulghur wheat in a pot.
When it’s cooked, add some chopped up strawberries and walnuts.
Flake the salmon, throw that and the carrots and scallions in with the bulghur.
Add a little soy sauce.
JOY
Green Pasta Stuff
In a blender, put:
Dill
Mint
Enough basil to match the dill and mint combined
Plain yogurt (or Greek — it’s tangier and creamier)
Garlic
A little spinach
Some feta
Some parmesan
Some romano
In a pan, cook some chicken breasts in balsamic vinegar and thyme. Blacken the shit out of it.
Take the breasts out, chop ‘em up. In the same pan, dump:
One red pepper, chopped coarsely
One green pepper, chopped coarsely
Some mushrooms
Cherry tomatoes
A zucchini, chopped coarsely
Some garlic
Some more balsamic vinegar
Cook till it meets your fancy.
In a pot, cook some kind of pasta. I like multi-colored rotini.
Mix it all together.
Sprinkle some pine nuts or, more realistically, chopped almonds on top.
THIS IS THE BEST. I’ve made it twice this week, and I think I’m going to eat this forever.
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Harriet, I love you.
And I love the way you can write anything and make it interesting. This is exactly the way I want to be able to cook especially as I’ve just moved into an apartment of my own for the first time. I’m so trying some of these recipes this week.
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That sounds like an awesome book, especially if it helps you come up with recipes like those (they all sound yummy). Neat, thanks for the rec! It’s on my wishlist now.
One rec in return for another: For elementary (and cheap) vegetarian cooking, I really like The Low-Budget Vegetarian Cookbook — http://www.lbveg.com/ . The first half is all about the ingredients and how to use them (like what the difference is between different kinds of rice, how to cook them and what to use them for, ditto for beans, plus how to cook beans so they’re not so gassy, and things like what spices tend to go well together) and the second half is all recipes. (And it’s free! The pdf is on the website!) I’m not actually vegetarian, but hey. My favorite is the lentil stew, with the optional tomatoes stirred in.
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Sort of in-line with The Flavor Bible is , which is useful once you have ingredients but are not sure you know the best way to wash/peel/chop/cook/whatever them.
My SO has pretty great instincts for what should go in a meal, but she works later than I do which means I’m usually on prep duty, so that book has been huge for helping me cut things faster. (Turns out I was doing onions wrong for years!)
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I LOVE cooking, especially baking. It’s science you can eat, math applied to everyday life and in the end you get cookies.
To that end I watch Alton Brown and America’s Test Kitchen obsessively.
Thank you for the cook book recommendation.
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I have a massive food-crush on Chef Michael Smith from Chef At Home and Chef Abroad. Not only is he Canadian (is my maple leaf showing?), he frequently makes recipes that are completely gluttonous, but you feel SO good about eating them.
My favorite recipe though, I came up with on my own.
Chicken Stew
5 chicken breasts, seasoned with salt and pepper. Pan fried in a bit of oil until crispy on the outside. They don’t have to be completely cooked through, as they will simmer more flavour into the stew.
Potatoes, at least two large ones per person eating. I peel and chunk about 6-7 of them.
Carrots, again as many as you think you’ll need, I do about six of these as well. Peeled and sliced.
Rutabaga. I kid you not, one about the size of your two fists put together should do. Peeled and chunked. Here’s a tip, you’ll see a faint line around the pieces when you first cut the rutabaga. You’ll want to peel under that line, or it will cook with a bitter flavour.
Frozen peas. They go in last, always otherwise they overcook and slightly dissolve.
More salt and pepper to taste, along with Sage, Thyme, Summer Savoury, Poultry Seasoning and Knorr Chicken Stock.
Put all cut and peeled veggies in the pot, and add about 10 cups of water. You need a big pot by the way. Shred the cooked chicken with two forks and add to the pot.
Add the seasonings and the chicken stock, I usually just pour the stock in, to the tune of 1/2 cup unmixed stock to every 3 cups of water. Taste test this frequently.
Adjust your seasonings and stock and salt and pepper to taste as the pot simmers. Start on Medium heat and move to medium low heat when the pot starts to boil.
When the potatoes are soft, or even whenever you feel like eating, add the frozen peas and let simmer for 5 more minutes. Serve, with crusty buns and butter.
(Truthfully, this can be cooked in under an hour, but I like leaving it on low and letting it simmer all day. You can swap out the chicken for turkey as the holidays arrive, and I even add some celery to it when the turkey goes in. I like the sharp flavour the celery leaves behind.)
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: THAT’S why the rutabaga was so nasty that one time I cooked one up. OHHHHHHHHHH
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This all sounds so yummy! That book is definitely on my wishlist now. Being a broke student who does tacos and lazy stir frys all the time, it would be nice to learn to cook for real.
Also this:
Some feta
Some parmesan
Some romano
made me think of Blackadder trying to teach Baldrick to add using beans.
Blackadder: Right Baldrick, let’s try again shall we? This is called adding. If I have two beans, and then I add two more beans, what do I have?
Baldrick: Some beans.
And then I lol’d
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You write recipes like I cook! Hooray! Which is my filthy horrible secret: I work at a food mag and I don’t use recipes hardly ever. (I read them! And then ignore them.) I may check out that Flavor Bible, though!
But seriously, once you get the hang of what goes with what, you don’t need recipes so much – for baking, sure, but not much else. I occasionally get to the point where I sniff everything before I put it in, just deciding if I will like it or not. Unless it’s smoked paprika, which goes in everything that doesn’t already have chipotle in it.
My favorite right now is chunky pasta sauces, kinda like the second half of yours. Then I put it on everything: pasta, fish, chicken. (Fish is great because if you cook it with the sauce over it, the fish won’t dry out so fast.) It’s basically puttanesca with benefits.
Saute these in the order of ingredients, in canola or olive oil, or both:
small can of anchovies, drained, sauteed until it goes to a paste (Makes the final sauce very savory but not really fishy. Be warned, though: anchovies usually smell like the walking dead until they cook down a bit. You can omit this one if the little fishies scare you; I won’t tell.)
a little powdered cayenne, or chipotle, or smoked paprika
a chopped onion
some garlic
some fine-chopped kale, if you like kale. Use more than you think necessary because it cooks down a lot. (Chard would probably work too, if you like chard; but I hate it, so I don’t know.)
14-oz can chopped tomatoes. (If you can get them with less salt, you probably want to.)
some good olives, like kalamata. (I take the pits out first because my husband hates impediments, but they’re tastier if you don’t, I’m told.)
capers, if you’re a salt fiend
Broccoli or spinach, if you don’t like kale or chard. Zucchini would work too.
Once the sauce comes together, you can throw it over pasta, maybe with some shrimp or chunked chicken thrown in there. You can also cook chicken in it, or fish fillets – saute them first to give them some color. Probably would be good with white beans, too, or over sauteed eggplant, and if you leave the anchovies out it’s vegan.
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That book sounds AMAZING.
Here’s a couple of recipes to add to the pot:
Extra Garlic Chicken and Things
Things you need:
Chicken pieces (I like thighs and drumsticks, anything with a bit of fat will taste best but breast is fine also)
Chopped up potatoes
As many of these as you want to eat.
A bulb of garlic
green olives
rosemary and thyme if you have it
Chicken stock
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Put olive oil in a roasting tin, scatter potatoes, chicken,olives and garlic cloves in the tin. Any of the bits touching the tin will be crispiest so position to your preference.
Drizzle with olive oil, squeeze a lemon over the top and pour enough chicken stock to half submerge the things in the tin.
Put in the oven at 220C for about an hour and a half – DINNER. This is easily adjusted from just one or two people to (my highest) 10, so good for last minute large dinners especially.
Mushroomy Pasta
You will need:
Mushrooms, sliced thinly
Bacon
Garlic
Onion
Cream
Flour
Maybe milk
Pasta
In a pot, boil some pasta
In a pan! Fry onion and garlic in whatever, oil or butter.
Add bacon and fry
Add mushrooms and fry
Mix flour into the fat in the pan to make a roux (paste!)
then turn the heat lower and put in the cream
Taste as you go along to adjust salt and pepper, sage is nice to put in if you have it
The sauce should now taste like a FOREST
Add flour to thicken, milk to thin the sauce to however you like it
Pour over the pasta
DINNER.
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“I had to figure out how to cook like a real person now, somebody who just wanted food and didn’t want an ego or identity served up along with it.”
LMAO.
I am going through this phase right now. Last year we signed up for a CSA share and it was hellish because I had all these veggies crowding up the fridge while I fretted about finding the exact recipe that would showcase these organic, locally-grown *gems*. In the meantime, food was going bad left and right. Yes, for 26 weeks I generally preferred to throw the food away instead of just doing up a stir-fry and calling it a night.
I decided to sign up again this year anyway. My new mantra is, “Everything tastes good sauteed in butter with garlic.” I am going to add, “This is just food, not my identity.”
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Try it again sometime Harriet. I like it raw too, it’s got this awesome sweet-crunchy taste, and I’m a sugar freak in all forms.
And I did it too, in fact I didn’t know until my first thanksgiving by myself when I cooked the rutabaga with just the layer of skin peeled, and my Dad ate some and said “What the hell? Did you not peel it all the way?” and I gave him a really insulted look.
I thought it was just a bad ‘baga, really.
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I love http://www.penguin.com.au/lookinside/spotlight.cfm?SBN=9781920989002
The Cook’s Companion
Author: Stephanie Alexander
As it is aphabetical by ingredient, it is perfect for what they hell do I do with X
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oh oh oh! And two of my favourite website related cooking things
Cooking by Numbers lets you tick boxes of what you have in your fridge and cupboards and then finds you recipes containing those items! This has proved invaluable to me as a student.
And also What the Fuck Should I Make For Dinner, because it has swears.
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I just bought a copy of The Flavor Bible on your recommendation and am in love. Thank you!
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