For many, "fast and easy" are the most important criteria in recipes. Lengthy and difficult are deal breakers. Nancy's cooking-phobic friend wails "Who would waste that much time when ten minutes later it's gonna be gone?"
Well, me, actually.
I'm always browsing around for something that looks to be a fun day or more in the kitchen.. But when I do, I want a result for all that effort that's better than just okay.
Recently, both Nancy and I spent multiple hours on complex cooking projects that turned out fine. They were good. But not all that good for the amount of work we put in. Especially when we think of the fast easy stuff we've made that actually turned out better results.
In this week's segment Nancy describes what she did with a few items she had on hand in her well-stocked pantry. She also raved about this simple method for Chicken Shawarma from the NY Times.
In my case it was all about leftovers. Last week while driving home I pondered what to do with the remains of several previous meals. There was yellow lemon rice, a half container of chicken broth, a couple of small chorizo sausages and half a shallot.
I sliced and fried up the sausage, added minced shallot to the grease it threw off, poured in the chicken broth, and then the rice. In 30 minutes from start to finish, most of which was hands off, it simmered into a soup that delivered more wow than my six hour, 15 step pork ragu.
So will I continue to try long, fancy recipes? You bet. Sometimes they really do pay off. And when they don't? Well, I still had fun.
"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, that's creativity."
-- Charles Mingus
