jim brentar dinner report 8-23-13 You might be asking yourself, “What did Jim have for dinner tonight?” Tonight’s menu was baked cod, rice pilaf, wax beans, and a simple tomato-cucumber salad. All made from scratch. With little gourmet touches. Think you can’t do it? Less than 45 minutes from putting some water on to boil and turning the oven on until we sat down to eat. And I’m slow at most kitchen tasks! Really slow! I started by putting a kettle of water on and turning the oven on (350 degrees). I turned the kettle down (to the lowest possible) after it came to a boil, but I didn’t use it until almost the end. Next pilaf! Rice pilaf involves sautéing the rice and cooking it with broth and/or vegetables. I chopped an onion (well, half an onion; it was a large onion). I started sautéing it (medium heat or medium low) in a little olive oil (about a tbsp). Added some salt and pepper (just a pinch of salt). Chopped up a few cloves of garlic and added that to the pan. Don’t forget to keep stirring regularly! Then a stalk of celery (usually good to clean well and peel off the stringy bits, but at least be sure to clean it well). Then a mild hatch pepper (actually about half a pepper). Hatch peppers were the thing at Heinen’s today. Now, you can use any vegetables that strike your fancy. Peas. Corn. Broccoli. Carrot. Fennel. Kohlrabi. Whatever. I used onion, garlic, celery and mild hatch pepper. Sauté the rice. Add a little extra butter, a tsp if you’ve got a non-stick pan. More if it’s not non-stick. Add 1 cup of rice. Sauté for a few minutes, stirring regularly. Only need a few minutes. Add 2 cups of vegetable stock. You can use meat stock if you’re not watching your diet; but those with gout should avoid meat stock. You could conceivably just add water, but this is a big chance to add some flavor! But you need 2 cups of cooking liquid. Also add some herbs and spices. I added a pinch more salt and pepper and some lemon grass, chervil, and savory. Give it all a good stir. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer. Put a reasonably snug fitting lid on the pan. Set the timer for 15 min (or so) if it’s white rice (what I used) or 35-40 minutes for brown rice. Minute rice will not work! Yes, you can buy pilaf mixes ready to cook at the store; but they’ll be high in sodium, might have msg or partially hydrogenated veg oil or high-fructose crap or other chemicals you don’t really want or need. VERY IMPORTANT: if you measured out the rice and liquid properly, you lower to simmer, cover the pan, AND WALK AWAY AND DON’T TOUCH IT or lift the lid or take a peek—not until the timer goes off. There, that was the only hard part. Fish is easy!!!!!!!!!!! Line a cookie sheet with foil and spray with non-stick oil spray. Rinse the fish and pat dry and put it on the cookie sheet. Check for bones (run your finger along). Might need tweezers to remove bones, but can be done with fingers. Melt about a tbsp of butter for each pound of fish. Brush fish with melted butter. Season the fish. Maybe just a pinch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper. And whatever herbs and spices you like. Italian seasonings are fine. Dill is great. I chose the same seasonings as for the pilaf: salt, pepper, lemon grass, chervil, savory. And a little bit of that mild hatch pepper chopped small. HERE’S A GOURMET TOUCH: sprinkle some panko bread crumbs (maybe a ¼ cup) over the fish. Regular bread crumbs are okay, but panko are better. Then a quick light spray of cooking oil spray over it all. If you have your own oil mister/squirter you can even avoid the tiny amount of unwanted chemicals in cooking oil spray. Into the oven (I turned on the oven first thing to make sure it was warm enough and ready and waiting). By the way, that was about 5 minutes from my lining the pan with foil and unwrapping the fish until it went into the oven. Fish is easy! Cod will usually take 10-15 minutes. This you can open and take a peek or a poke at. When you can take a fork and gently tug at a corner of the fish and see it flake off, it’s done. (Test both thicker and thinner ends of the fish. If the thicker and isn’t done when the thin end is, you might want to cover the thin end with foil. But it’s not absolutely necessary.) Don’t overcook it. Take it out. Cover with foil to keep warm if need be. Cod is more forgiving than some other fishes to slight overcooking. But most fishes can be safely eaten undercooked (or even raw). But overcooked fish can be dry and unpalatable. WHILE the fish is in the oven, I start cooking the wax beans. When I want dinner quickly with less time or effort, I can do veggies easy. Simply steam, boil, or sauté. Wax beans take 5 to ten minutes (so do green beans). To get them extra soft, you can cook them longer. But I like mine with a little firmness. So do most gourmets. Some veggies (onions, carrots, Brussels sprouts, beans) take longer. Some (like asparagus) should not be cooked more than 5 minutes! It’s easy to learn from experience and/or look up information on how long for any given vegetable. Side note on veggies: Always wash them before using; and look for (and cut out) any bad parts. For green beans or wax beans, you should snap off the stems (if there are any stems still hanging on). You can leave them 3 inches long, or cut em in half, or into one-inch segments. Totally up to you. Express yourself! Also, it’s good to clean all the veggies before you start cooking. Okay, I’ve turned on the oven and put some water on to boil. Less than ten minutes later, I’m started on the onions I just chopped. I chopped and added the rest (garlic first, then celery, then pepper) as the onions (and the rest) were sautéing. Less than 15 min after I started, I’m sautéing the rice. A few minutes later I’m adding the veggie stock and herbs and turning up the heat. While that’s coming to a boil, I work on the fish. Keeping one eye on the pilaf. You should know when it comes to a boil--even if you put the lid on to help it boil faster. If you’re a minute late in recognizing, you might be okay. Even a slight boil-over isn’t the end of the world. But don’t let it ruin your mood (and thus it won’t ruin dinner). While the pilaf is simmering I get the fish in the oven. It’s now been a little over a half-hour since I started working on dinner (and I’m slow). Remember how I started the kettle first thing? I turn the kettle back up to high. It’s boiling again in a few seconds. I cleaned the beans (and chopped them) and put them in a pan in a steamer basket back when I was cleaning veggies for the pilaf. In less than a minute the beans are cooking. The pilaf is simmering. The beans are boiling/steaming. The fish is in the oven (it’s good to start taking a peek and checking the fish). I’ve got five to ten minutes. Salad! I need two minutes for a simple salad. Sometimes need only 60 seconds. Today’s two-minute salad: 30sec, wash cucumber. 30 more sec, wash 8 grape tomatoes (8 can all fit in my hands at once). 30 more sec, peel a 3-inch section of cucumber (10 seconds per inch, even if you’re slow). 30 more sec, slice cucumber. 30 more and cut tomatoes in half. Finally, a couple strips of that hatch pepper that I’d already cleaned in pilaf prep. And arrange nicely in a small bowl (another gourmet touch). OKAY!!! So it was 3 minutes, not two. But a simple salad is quick and easy. So, 45 minutes after I look at my watch and say “it’s time to start dinner,” Mary Kay and I are eating a gourmet meal. It took me longer to write about it than it did to cook it! The pilaf was the only slightly difficult part! And only slightly! Everything else freakingly easy. Mary Kay says I should ask how well grounded you are in the basics of cooking. I said, he probably knows the basics already. But if there’s any basics I can pontificate about, please let me know.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 04:21:57 +0000
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