Here’s something to shake up the cooking doldrums. Rather than bring you a report on one of my own efforts in the kitchen (and rest assured there’ll be more to come), I’ll step back and let you look at 101 ideas from a master. Mark Bittman, the food writer behind (among other things) the column “The Minimalist” for the New York Times, is extremely good at finding ways of producing more (in terms of taste) with less (in terms of substituting less costly ingredients while making a version of a more fancy recipe).
He’s recently tackled another cost factor: time. The claim (I have not tried any yet) is that these are ten minute preparation time recipes. This might be perfect for that busy schedule you have going there, or just a welcome shortening of hot kitchen time during the remaining long Summer days.
Don’t turn your nose up at the substitutions (sometimes discussed in his column) and simple sources that he sometimes uses – He knows what he’s doing (I’ve had the pleasure of sampling his cooking) and the recipes usually work really well. I did ok in my student days of cooking on a budget (both financially and timewise), but I think that a list like this would still have been welcome, to broaden my repertoire (although not all 101 of them ought to be thought of as cooking on a budget). Here’s the link to the article, and here’s a randomly (almost) selected couple:
20 Cut eggplant into half-inch slices. Broil with lots of olive oil, turning once, until tender and browned. Top with crumbled goat or feta cheese and broil another 20 seconds.
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27 Egg in a hole, glorified: Tear a hole in a piece of bread and fry in butter. Crack an egg into the hole. Deglaze pan with a little sherry vinegar mixed with water, and more butter; pour over egg.
If you give any of them a try, let me know how they turn out. I imagine that some of these might form a basis for more elaborate recipes that you can invent yourself.
Finally, if you’re new to cooking, or have not really tried it before…. some of these could be a good place to start.
Enjoy!
-cvj
ooh, that’s great! We’ll have to try some of those. Though I see one of our favorites (sausage and peppers, though we usually eat it over pasta).
We just got his cookbook “The Best Recipes in the World” as a wedding present. And we love it so far. Great stuff in that big, thick book and the indices are great too. (organized by country, with indications of how long it takes to make, sample menus according to country and type of dinner (including cold weather and hot weather meals), and a regular index.)
At some point, I was advised that applesauce could be substituted for eggs in baking. This came in handy when I had to make dessert for a whole living group (about a score of undergraduates) and the house steward that term couldn’t keep the refrigerators stocked with eggs. The cookies that night were vegan, or almost so — and, surprisingly, they tasted good!
I actually have been making sporadic progress through this list since it appeared in the NYT last month. Some of them are quite obvious (a sizable fraction basically is “cook pasta” or an omlette variant) and some are not worth contemplating in my situation (sorry lobster and filet mignon, but I’m a college student!), but I remember really liking the couscous one (#17) and the sandwich in #85 is really, really good.