Woman to woman

When I was asked to do this piece on Smart Cooking for Working Women, the first question I asked was what does that mean? Every woman who works and has to feed her family or herself just has to be smart and cook smart. She doesn’t have an option. So the commissioning editor, sensing my irritation, quickly backtracked and said so can you give a few tips on how to make it even smarter? That made me smile and so here I am trying to help you make sense of the smart, smarter and smartest ways of cooking up a storm even while juggling deadlines, irate bosses and targets that directly affect your KRA.

The main mantra of food and cooking is—you are sunk if you consider it a chore. Food is a given, so embrace it in your stride as you would a husband or a partner, your need to have a career or the desire to keep a good home. Treat it as a stress reliever. That is the smart thing to do and the rest follows easily.

Planning your fridge

One thing I learnt through the years was if the fridge was planned, you were set in the kitchen. By that I don’t mean planning your menus a week in advance. That is quite impossible. I mean being prepared for every exigency—tired bones, no time to think, late nights, carrying work home…. So on weekends, I would boil small quantities of different dals and freeze them. Then they just needed to be tempered and would thaw in the karhai itself. I would make ginger, garlic and onions pastes (because I don’t care much for the ready-made ones) and freeze those too in ice trays, taking out one cube at a time.

It is also a good idea to keep some stock ready, vegetables or otherwise, in the freezer along with boiled chicken. Apart from that, I would always keep ready a stock of boiled potatoes and peeled garlic cloves in the fridge (delegate all of the above to the help). Nowadays, with the plethora of foreign foods in the market, you have a range of products like thin pita breads almost like chapatis, the regular pitas and heat-and-eat rotis and parathas. They make me feel safe. At a crunch, you can turn them into Quesadillas with some cheese.

Planning your kitchen cabinet

Now this is very important and the secret to the success of whatever you cook. Letting out my trade secrets is not what I do usually, but what the heck. The days you go to the supermart or on your travels abroad, scour the store’s shelves for interesting sauces and spice mixes. There’s a treasure trove out there waiting to cover up for your lack of time or inclination. Where sauces are concerned, the Thai shelves offer the best options— various kinds of chilli, sweet and hot spring roll sauces, seafood sauces and the works. As for the dry mixes, check out the imported food sections for barbeque mixes, dry onion, garlic, ginger powders, creole and Moroccan spice powders, mixed Italian pasta mixes, dried mushrooms and the like. Nowadays, Indian companies, too, are manufacturing such products.

If you are passing the Indian section, grab stuff like Kashmiri masala or kebab/korma masala, wet, packaged pastes which come in ready combinations like jeera, chilli and oil. Don’t run scared. I am not asking you to make kebabs, kormas or wazwan meals. Just grab them. Now organise your shelves according to Oriental, Continental and Creole and, finally, Indian. How long they will remain so is another issue, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. Read on to figure out why I said all of the above.

Planning your menus

Ignore the subhead. There’s nothing planned about this. It’s just about positioning and strategies. Is there anyone that you need to impress? Well, I need to impress myself all the time because I am sick of restaurant food or having leftovers and certainly won’t have maggi or plain bread for dinner or lunch for that matter.

I presume, for all of you out there, dinner is the main and only meal you actually eat at home. For those of you who need to keep the calm at home with your food, here are some important tips.

Develop a range of one-dish meals, which are a combination of protein, vitamins, fibre and most importantly—taste. I will elaborate on that later.

More importantly, give every dish a special name. Why so? Because it somehow then conveys the impression that you worked very hard at it, dug around for the recipe, found it and then made it specially for family or friends. If making it for yourself, just concentrate on the taste. The rest as you know is a con job. If you need to serve a threecourse meal, then plan it such that the two others complement that one dish. Thirdly, expound on the technique, make a passing reference to how people are forgetting the real taste of fresh vegetables or meats and hence it’s important to retain those (indicative of effort and skill). Let me explain.

Take, for example, what I call fish/ chicken for the soul, a one-dish meal. It’s simple. Take out those fish fillets or chicken breasts (boneless works best) from the freezer as soon as you get home from work or thaw them in the microwave. Get that bottle of Lemoneez and add a few drops, add some garlic paste and salt. Now dive into that global cabinet of yours and keep adding according to your family’s tastes— chilli flakes, or some sweet and hot Thai spring roll sauce, or some peri-peri sauce, whatever takes your fancy. While the fish is marinating, cut some beans, you don’t need to slice them fine, just attractive halves cut diagonally across; carrots, if you have them; some broccoli or cauliflower. Let them blanche for a while.

While they are blanching, take the green of the day—spinach or haak or mustard greens. Wash well and separate the leaves, keeping them whole. No painstaking chopping. Peel an onion, cut them into rounds. Take a few of those garlic cloves from the fridge. Now heat some olive oil or any other white oil in a non-stick pan. Sear the fish or chicken pieces on high heat, browning both sides to seal the juices. Take them out of pan. Line the pan with your veggies, onion and garlic, place the fish on top. If using chicken, place the chicken at the bottom and then the veggies. Now cover all of it with your greens.

Add a dash of oyster sauce or seafood sauce or some dry spice mix or even tomato ketchup if you want and chilli flakes if that’s to your taste or crushed pepper.

Cover with a tight lid and let steam for about 10 minutes. If you don’t eat meat or fish, break some eggs on the bed of greens and sprinkle some dry spice mix on them. If you are a vegetarian, add mushrooms. A couple of minutes before taking off the fire, add some nicely sliced tomatoes for that extra colour.

The spiciness or lack of it depends on your family’s tastes. Serve with spaghetti or crusty bread or even lightly buttered rice. If you want to turn it into a three-course meal, you can add a crunchy salad, soft cheese, sweet corn out of a tin, mashed potatoes made from the boiled potatoes you already have in the fridge, on the side.

You can also make an Indianised meal with flavoured rice and dahi chutney.

Remember, you can develop such one-dish concoctions the Indian way, the Oriental way or the Continental way, depending on ingredients at hand and also turn it into a three-course offering.

Planning the presentation

Much of what we appreciate in our food lies in the appearance and colour. Dress up your food. Add that bit of colour with a dash of artistry in the plating. A sprig of fresh parsley or coriander, a slice of fresh tomato or finely cut multicoloured peppers, a streak of mustard or tomato sauce, offsetting the colours in the main dish.

Better still, always keep some pretty serving dishes handy. It all turns into a very special meal, even if you are serving khichdi with pakoris, which you MUST call a Jambalaya with fritters!

Last but not the least, tell yourself there can be no one smarter than you as you walk away from that table having impressed everyone suitably so that you don’t have to clear the dishes. They do it all for you. Also, if you are single, don’t bother with any of the above unless you are posting on Facebook!

olmdesk@outlookindia.com