Saturday, September 29, 2012

Pragmatic, Spontaneous aka Creative Cooking

There are two basic types of cooks.  One plans meals, checks recipes and buys the food needed.  My sister-in-law is like that.  We are very close but, oh, so different.  She can go to a half a dozen stores just to get the exact cheese needed for a recipe. 

I'm the opposite.  I never really know what I'll be cooking until I see what there is in the fridge, freezer and pantry.

My meals don't have fancy themes.  I can make a variety of different sorts of dishes for the same meal.  The closest thing to a theme would be "healthy," "balanced" and simple.

I'll give for an example my latest "invention" aka experiment.

Someone gave us a jar of olives.  We don't eat olives.  It's not that we don't like them, but...  I also had some basmati brown rice, which had been cooked up for the pre-Yom Kippur fast meal.  I made a shidduch, match, decided to cook them together.

First I sauteed onion, pepper, some olives (and the brine/liquid) and olive oil.  When I could smell it cooking, I added the cooked rice, cooked covered and stirred on a low flame.  (You may need to add a bit of water.)  When I could smell the rice cooking and the flavors blending, I turned it off.

It was a success.  Everybody liked it. 

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