Taking cooking easy - ur doin it wrong
Jul. 29th, 2012 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janewilliams20 I'd originally planned on using up spare rice noodles tonight by making pad thai. It's an easy enough dish, TBH, it takes a bit of veg prep to start with, and making a separate omelette, and quite a few ingredients, but it's not hard. But, I was tired. There was a ready-WW-pointed readi-meal in the fridge. Why not just pop a curry in the microwave?
The trouble with most readi-meals, and this was no exception, is that they have apparently never heard of vegetables. There's the meat bit, the carbs bit, probably a sauce, but that's it. I usually microwave blat something green at the same time - cabbage, courgettes, anything where the cooking method is "chop it, blat for 4 minutes".
Curry doesn't really go with that sort of very simple veg. Saag paneer, or something like that, yes, but you do need to dress it up a little bit. I didn't have enough fresh spinach left from last night's saag paneer to do that again, but I knew the frozen needed using, and there were mushrooms. Mushroom saag. That'll do. Dead easy. Cook it while the readimeal's in the microwave for 4 minutes.
Chop some onion, and some garlic
Spray pan with frylight, start those softening.
Add garam masala powder - I'm taking this easy, not mixing spices. Last night was chicken madras, I wanted a spinach dish to cool things down and be creamy - tonight, it's chcken korma, and I want something tomato-based and spicy as a contrast.
Frozen spinach in boilng water, then in the microwave.
Chop mushrooms, into the special microwave mushroom dish that doesn't leave mushroom stock everywhere.
Spinach out of microwave, mushrooms in, 3 min blat.
Drain spinach, use a little of the stock to stop the garlic and spices burning.
Spinach into pan. Turn heat back up. Taste, add more garam masala. Open pot, realise why not much is coming out when shaken, get some out with spoon.
Drain mushrooms, add to pan. Heat down.
Readimeal into microwave, 2 min.
Open carton chopped toms, pour about a third in. Heat back up, stir, start to think "reduce" about the sauce. Note to self that tomorrow's breakfast will probably be Tunisian Eggs so as to use this up, along with the ends of the loaf that aren't fit to be sandwiches.
Readimeal gets shaken, given second part of blat.
Beep... turn it all off, serve.
Why didn't I just cook properly in the first place?
The trouble with most readi-meals, and this was no exception, is that they have apparently never heard of vegetables. There's the meat bit, the carbs bit, probably a sauce, but that's it. I usually microwave blat something green at the same time - cabbage, courgettes, anything where the cooking method is "chop it, blat for 4 minutes".
Curry doesn't really go with that sort of very simple veg. Saag paneer, or something like that, yes, but you do need to dress it up a little bit. I didn't have enough fresh spinach left from last night's saag paneer to do that again, but I knew the frozen needed using, and there were mushrooms. Mushroom saag. That'll do. Dead easy. Cook it while the readimeal's in the microwave for 4 minutes.
Chop some onion, and some garlic
Spray pan with frylight, start those softening.
Add garam masala powder - I'm taking this easy, not mixing spices. Last night was chicken madras, I wanted a spinach dish to cool things down and be creamy - tonight, it's chcken korma, and I want something tomato-based and spicy as a contrast.
Frozen spinach in boilng water, then in the microwave.
Chop mushrooms, into the special microwave mushroom dish that doesn't leave mushroom stock everywhere.
Spinach out of microwave, mushrooms in, 3 min blat.
Drain spinach, use a little of the stock to stop the garlic and spices burning.
Spinach into pan. Turn heat back up. Taste, add more garam masala. Open pot, realise why not much is coming out when shaken, get some out with spoon.
Drain mushrooms, add to pan. Heat down.
Readimeal into microwave, 2 min.
Open carton chopped toms, pour about a third in. Heat back up, stir, start to think "reduce" about the sauce. Note to self that tomorrow's breakfast will probably be Tunisian Eggs so as to use this up, along with the ends of the loaf that aren't fit to be sandwiches.
Readimeal gets shaken, given second part of blat.
Beep... turn it all off, serve.
Why didn't I just cook properly in the first place?