Necessity is the mother of all invention. Someone wise said that, right?
I am wary of wading into some Jamie Oliver style, thirty-second-meals, no-pot-no-knife, cook as you are without even needing a cooker, type narrative. It’s not how I feel, not how I cook, and not how we should be moving forward as sentient adults trying to navigate life. But…
The thing is, sometimes you just want bish, bash, bosh, supper. Bada-bing, bada-boom, lunch. To me, to you, back to me, to you, it’s breakfast. You get the gist.
I promised myself not to mention politics, economics, war or anything else constituting the shower of shit currently raining down on us from the mad, entitled nut-jobs who've ended up with their hands on the tillers of global affairs. So I won’t. Suffice to say, having a directory of whippet-quick dishes up your dressing gown sleeve is a game changer for the next meal you make in harassed anger. So here goes.
Whilst writing the recipes below, I’m trying to avoid developing a Jamie Oliver-style framework, but I can’t help being struck by an almost ubiquitous repetition of something rich (i.e. strong, earthy, fatty, meaty, plain-ish), something acidic (i.e. lemon, vinegar, tomatoes, etc) and something vaguely aromatic (chilli, garlic, herbs, etc). Bring a combination of those three things together with some salt and oil and you have the fizz of a high-hat drum-roll. Underpin the high hat with the grounding bass drum of pasta, boiled potatoes, rice, cous cous, etc, and you have a perfectly delicious and easy meal.
Have a good list of these and you can cook day-in-day-out almost without thought, which in turn will free you up to take on something ambitious or complex when the moment takes you. I think it’s how I cook, and I think I’m very happy with it.
(Oh, by the way, for the purposes of this, salt and oil don’t count, nor does the main carb, be it pasta or rice or noodles. This is just an idea of some saucy type things that can be whipped up in an instant and then tossed over noodles or pasta or served alongside rice. Similarly, adding some greens, simply boiled, maybe tossed with salt and oil, and maybe some lemon juice, will always round out a meal, you know that as well as I do. Everything serves two people.)
Pork mince (or mushrooms), Lao Gan Ma, black vinegar:
250g pork mince (or equivalent mushrooms, finely diced)
2 tbsp Kohlrabi, peanut and tofu flavour Lao Gan Ma
1 tbsp black vinegar
Fry some pork mince hard (i.e. until crispy and browning) in a good glug of oil. If using mushrooms, cut them into small dice and do the same. Don’t season until you get a good colour on them as you don’t want them to leach eater and stew. Once your base is nice and fried and crispy, hit it with a pinch of salt, your nice naughty Lao Gan Ma, and your black vinegar. If I’m in a hurry I’ll eat this almost immediately, often tossed over those nice udon noodles that come in a little pack and cost 70p. I just pour a kettle of boiling water over them and give them a couple of minutes to loosen up, I’ve always assumed they’re already cooked. This also works nicely over greens, or on rice. If you have time, let this blip away for 20 minutes to deepen the flavour, although you might need to add a splash or two of water to keep it loose if you do that. I use the noodle water, if so.
Chorizo and peppers:
250g cooking chorizo, as in the soft ones
2 large red peppers, or three of those pointy ones, sliced
1 bunch spring onions, hacked up
Is this even a recipe? I brown off the chorizo in a pan over medium heat, then add some oil and the sliced peppers, turn the heat to high and let the whole thing get smoky and spitting. I try and go hard until the peppers start to blacken, sometimes it all gets too smoky and people start shouting at me, at which point toss in the spring onions, add a pinch of salt, reduce the heat, and pop a lid on. Let this steam and whistle for 6-8 minutes so that the peppers collapse and the chorizo are cooked through. From here, the world’s your oysters. Popping the chorizo in a halved baguette with some of the soft peppers is a lovely lunch; serving it all alongside some rice or boiled potatoes is a simple supper. Sometimes I add a tin of chickpeas, sometimes I add cubed potatoes and some tinned tomatoes and take it all the way to a warming stew. The initial triumvirate is often good enough though.
Peanut butter noodles:
2 tbsp smooth peanut butter
1 tbsp crispy chilli oil
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
Again, not a recipe. Simmer two ‘nests’ of egg noodles in boiling water for 5 minutes. While you do that, mix the peanut butter, crispy chilli oil and vinegar in a bowl. Add the noodles, plus a splash or two of the noodle water, mix to coat all the noodles and eat. Of course, you can embellish this with all manner of things, not least some herbs and spring onions if you so wish, and some steamed greens can aid this in becoming closer to a fully-fledged meal, but if you want a five-minute meal with basic store-bought ingredients that has the feeling of an elevated takeaway dish, this works.
Bastards pesto:
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