Recipe: Basic Rice Meal

I can't believe I haven't actually cooked this during my lenttide yet, it's the easiest thing and what I cook the most often. The key elements are: 1) rice (basmati is my favourite) 2) cooking sauce and 3) anything you want in the stir-fry. My favourite cooking sauces to use include teriyaki, black bean and hoi sin. When using hoi sin, I love to include sweet pepper. For some reason these very Asian (influenced) sauces aren't that easy to find in the Czech Republic, despite Uncle Ben's jars being a common feature. For some reason, the biggest range of exotic food is Mexican. Anyway, back to what I was talking about: the sauce I use most frequently here is 'Provences' sauce. The major ingredients are tomatoes, courgettes aka. zucchinis and herbs de provences. I do seem to have become rather enamoured with that herb.

On with the recipe!

INGREDIENTS

Cooking sauce ('provensalska' in this case)

Rice (basmati in this case)

Cooking oil (doesn't matter which)

Potatoes

Carrot(s)

Onion

White kidney beans

Garlic (2 cloves in this case)

Ground Pepper, Chili if you feel like adding it

Step 0: Peel the potatoes if you feel like it. Carrots too I guess. If the potato skin is smooth and clean, like on salad potatoes, I don't bother peeling.

Step 1: Get the rice boiling and keep half an eye on it. The rice will be done before the main dish, so once it is or nearly done, cut off the heat to the rice and let it stand. Rice can stay hot for a very long time when covered.

Step 2: Chop up the hard vegetables into cubic chunks and warm them in the frying pan. The heat should be just above moderate.

Step 3: Open the tin of beans and drain. What I normally do is have the tin lid only opened 3/4 of the way, then hold it down as I pour out the liquid.

Step 4: Stir the vegetables and add the pepper. Once they are sizzling immediately after a stir, turn down the heat. Pour in the beans a minute or two later.

Step 5: Chop up the garlic and onion. The onion should be quartered, then each quartered segment chopped. Then separate the layers. This makes sure the onion pieces are crunchy when you eat them.

Step 6: After a couple of stirs with the beans, add more pepper if you wish, then pour in the onion and garlic. A couple more minutes of sizzling and stirring will follow.

Step 7: The rice is likely to be ready by this point, so cut the heat. Pour into the frying pan the cooking sauce. It will only need a few minutes to heat up, so stir regularly and then serve. As always, taste test to insure its readiness.

Recipe: Mushroom and Butter Bean Stew

Like I said in my last blog post, this is a work in progress as stew was what I had intended to cook, but clear soup was what I ended up with. Still tasted great though, and it looked very appetising to my colleagues when I had some at work.

INGREDIENTS

Mushrooms

Butter Beans

Potatoes

Carrots, or 1 large Carrot

Onion

2-3 cloves of garlic

Vegetable Stock

Herbs de Provences

Oil (preferably olive)

Step 1: Boil some water for the vegetable broth; if you don't have a kettle handy, boil the water in the pot/saucepan you will use to cook your stew in. Once the water is boiled, dissolve the vegetable stock cube in it.

Step 2: Peel and chop the potato and carrot into chunks.

Step 3: Warm up the stew pot/your largest saucepan with enough oil to cover the base. For most stews, olive oil is recommended, but I didn't have any at the time and used standard cooking oil, which worked fine.

Step 4: Once the pot/pan is warmed up, on a med-high heat, pour in the carrot and potato and stir frequently. If you haven't already, dice or chop the onion and garlic.

Step 5: After about 3-5 minutes of shallow-frying the hard vegetables, add in the garlic and onion and continue to stir frequently. It's recommended to turn down the heat a little. Also feel free to add the herbs de provences at this point, also use some black pepper and salt if you wish.

Step 6: Between the stirring, open and part-drain the tin of butter beans and chop the mushrooms. After a minute or two of stirring in the onion and garlic, as well as herbs/seasonings, the mushrooms and butter beans can be added in.

Step 7: The preserving liquid that accompanied the butter beans should begin to boil slightly, as the oil should have been used up by this point. The aroma from the cooking ingredients (as well as some cream coming out of the mushrooms - allegedly) should give away that everything is cooking nicely. Add more herbs if the smell isn't to your liking.

Step 8: Pour in the vegetable broth and turn heat down to relatively low once it begins to boil. Leave the stew to - um - stew for around 20 minutes or so. Smell and taste test in order to make sure it's ready.

Step 9: Serve with bread. :D

The key to good cooking is knowing what you like

So tonight I have made my first attempt at cooking a stew. Notice the word attempt. I succeeded in making a watery yet very tasty soup. In order to make it a stew I need to have the broth be quite a bit creamier and thicker. If I've read the recipes correctly, the way to do that is to make sure I use fresh mushrooms as opposed to the tinned mushrooms.

Ironically, the inspiration for attempting to make a stew was finding tins of butter beans and mushrooms in the same aisle at a supermarket. Butter beans are my favourite kind of bean, and I always enjoy them in my Mum's stews. Or in Whetherspoon's Five Bean Chili. But I think I prefer them in my Mum's stews.

As for mushrooms...they are not the most obvious ingredient to cook with for me. I like them, but only if they're cooked correctly, so I can never outright say whether I like or hate mushrooms. Usually it's the former. I like mushrooms covered in garlic butter and breadcrumbs. I like mushrooms stirred in a stir-fry. I like them properly sliced and grilled. I like them covered in batter ala. the Japanese tempura. I don't like them boiled on their own and then served. And I don't like them when the cook didn't take care of them, because in those cases they taste rubbery and slippery.

I'll write up the recipe for my soup attempting to be a stew tomorrow, I'll just have to label it as a work-in-progress, like my strawberry turnovers.

Discussion: Could other bad habits be encouraged by eating meat?

The general philosophy in Hinduism is that willingly eating meat encourages you to be more violent, more cruel. If you eat meat, you are eating the remains of an animal that was killed, which had suffered and died to provide you your food. Such energies can permeate to elsewhere, so if you are cruel to animals, you are likely to be cruel to other humans as well. Basically, the idea is that you have to respect all life, and being cruel to one form of life means you will be cruel to another at some point.

It's an interesting way of looking at the relationship between us, our food and each other. But this mindset obviously does not explain a lot of exceptions: many harsh and cruel soldiers have been loving to their families, many who eat meat regularly could never harm a fly and many slave owners of the old British Empire committed absolutely abhorrent acts toward their slaves while being the most genteel of people to their white acquaintances.

I did start to wonder though if, maybe by eating processed meat on a frequent basis, people slide into other bad habits. I have already mentioned junk food but, let's be honest, eating junk food is a simple consequence of being lazy most of the time. What I was wondering was if there could possibly be a link between meat-eaters and litterbugs. You see, while many Hindu philosophers consider those who eat meat frequently (or ever) to be cruel to others - or will inevitably be cruel to others - I can't help but wonder at the background of those who'll buy a bunch of food from a chippy or kebab shop somewhere, not finish it, and then dump it on the ground. There is no stronger statement of how little you care for others or your environment.

But hey, all individuals are products of their culture. So why is it that many a respectable person can eat a lot of meat (or even junk food) and still be able to respect others and everything around them? It's all to do with mindset: there are things some people take for granted. A lot of people who litter a lot and get wasted on alcohol in the mistaken belief that they have a "good time" probably have no clue where any of their food comes from and probably don't care. I have no idea who said this, but there is a certain saying floating around: if the majority of the world had to kill the animals for their meat, or at least witness their slaughter, a great many of them would be vegetarian instantly. Ditto for the people I'm talking about here, I can guarantee that.

Discussion: The future of crop-growing

My brother already gave an idea of having multi-level greenhouses growing fruit and vegetables in the future. In some places they already do that. And hey, what better way of keeping out pests than with walls or windows?

There are other ways of course. During the second World War, the moat around the Tower of London was turned into one large vegetable patch. I'm not necessarily suggesting we do that now, I'm just pointing out that farmland can be found or placed anywhere. Newer blocks of flats these days have gardens on the rooftops. In other building designs, you find gardens in an open-air area halfway up the building. These can also be turned into viable allotments.

There are also some science fiction stories that have space ships with airponics bays or garden chambers. One key purpose of these is to produce oxygen for the ship. The other is to grow food. In the future, when we do manage to colonise our moon and beyond, I can easily see crops grown on space stations being a key trade commodity.

Traditional Czech Vegetarian Food

Huh, so that was 2 days without a blog post. Inexcusable!

But then, that is what happens when I find myself going for drinks after work on a whim, thinking I'll only be out about 2 hours and 2 turn into 6...

As for yesterday, well, my trip home was delayed when I was playing Monopoly at a friend's flat. Granted it was the shortest game of Monopoly I had ever played, but still. The same set of friends took me to a restaurant and recommended I try the local Czech potato pancakes, better known around here as bramboraky. They were yummy!

Now remember I had that loophole in place for trying new recipes: it's the only instance where dairy products are allowed. I only found out the recipe for these pancakes just now, so good thing that loophole's in place. In case you haven't clicked on the link: milk and eggs are among the ingredients, so it's suitable for vegetarians but not vegans.