Well you aren't so awesome when it's 9:00pm on a Tuesday night, you're starving and you end up in a drive-thru deciding whether chicken nuggets or a fillet-o-fish will go better with a half-empty bottle of sauvignon blanc.
Being crazy perfectionist when planning your meals defeats the entire purpose. Sure you could plan a week of amazing tantalizing gourmet treats from scratch but unless cooking the evening meal is your only job and you have no other responsibilities whatsoever and you are a superhero or energiser bunny you are just flat out lying to yourself.
The reality is there WILL be days when everything goes wrong, you come home late, a friend calls you in tears because the moron you never liked is treating her like crap again, the power goes off or you just plain can't be bothered. If you don't have days like that then we are probably living in different universes. You need to build stuffups into your planning.
A well stocked pantry (and spaces on your meal plan) can help out in times of crisis or laziness. I'm a big fan of carbs in a crisis but go with what works for you.
Some of my pantry basics:
Rice/Pasta/grains:
- basmati rice (to serve with curries etc - and its low GI - bonus!)
- jasmine rice (short grain)
- carnaroli or arborio rice (for risotto - I prefer carnaroli but arborio can be easier to get)
- spaghetti (I like the Barilla Spaghetti Rigate - the ridges hold the sauce better)
- macaroni or short pasta
- thai style flat rice noodles
- polenta
- couscous
Tinned stuff/Sauces
- Tomato pasta sauce or passata
- Tinned crushed tomatoes
- Tinned diced tomatoes
- Tomato paste
- Tinned red salmon
- Tinned mixed beans
- Tobasco
- Woucestershire sauce
- mustards (wholegrain, Dijon, English etc)
- coconut milk
- coconut cream
- curry pastes (madras, vindaloo, thai red curry etc)
- soy sauce
- fish sauce
Oils/vinegars:
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Grapeseed oil (great for frying)
- Nut oil (unless you're allergic like I am)
- White wine vinegar
- Rice wine vinegar
- Balsamic vinegar
- Red wine vinegar
Vegetables:
- Potatoes
- Onions (keep potatoes and onions well separate)
- Sweet potato
- Carrots
- Garlic
- Fresh herbs (in the garden or a window box)
Basics:
- Plain flour
- Self raising flour
- Caster sugar
- Icing sugar
- Quality salt flakes
- Whole peppercorns
- Bicarb soda
- baking powder
- cocoa
- stock (chicken, vegetable)
- breadcrumbs
Alcohol:
- beer
- brandy/cognac
- plenty of wine
The most important thing in my pantry: a folder filled with menus from fabulous local takeaway restaurants. Why grab a whopper when you can get a pad thai instead?
Some quick and easy ideas:
Yes it would be great to only eat fabulous slow-cooked tomato pasta sauces made from your own organically grown heirloom tomatoes with fresh picked basil and garlic but it isn't possible on a daily basis for many of us. (Grendel, you can stop gloating now.)
A jar of Barilla pasta sauce for $2.50 can be bulked up in a few minutes with a tin of 79c tomatoes, some fried onion and garlic and a liberal amount of quality salt and freshly ground pepper. Add fresh herbs if you've got them. A tiny splash of balsamic vinegar or red wine will give the sauce depth with minimal effort.
You can even buy garlic in a jar now if you don't have access to garlic straight out of the ground or you don't add it to everything like I do. Serve over decent quality (egg) pasta with a liberal amount of grated parmesan/reggiano and a generous glass of wine and you'll be a quasi-Italian Mama in minutes.
A couple of potatoes (I like ruby lou or royal blue but whatever you have is fine) brushed, not washed or peeled and some onion chucked into a food processor with a grating attachment can become potato rosti in a flash.
My grandmother likes to fry the onion first but I often forget.Mix the potato and onion with egg and a bit of flour. Season well and form into flat cakes with your hands. Pop them in the fridge for a few minutes if you remember, then into a small amount of oil over medium heat and flip when the bottom goes crispy and golden.
Drain the rosti on paper towel while you wilt some baby spinach in the frypan (off the heat will usually work) and poach or fry an egg or two. Stack up the plate with the spinach, rosti and then top with the egg. No harm in adding some proscuitto if you have it. Serve with beer.
If you've got time to scoot past an open butcher or fishmonger (lucky you!) on the way home your stocked pantry will convert a piece of protein into a meal, stat.
Fridge and Freezer essentials to follow!
UPDATE: While I'm finishing up my fridge and freezer posts, you might want to head over to Summer Tomato. Darya has written a great post about stocking your pantry for healthy eating.
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]]>I have no idea how this happens when I dutifully write a meal plan and shopping list every week, but I digress. So we had risotto cakes all wrapped up in prosciutto and served with sweet balsamicky tomatoes and rocket.
This recipe is an easy one, and very quick if you happen to have some left-over plainish risotto in the fridge. I never seem to, we're both far too fat and far too fond of risotto.
photo credit: Metano
At any rate this makes a nice dinner party entree with a little "here's some I prepared earlier" magic. On a weeknight it is far more important to make sure your husband knows exactly how long you've been standing in front of the stove.
You'll need a couple of cups of cooked risotto to serve 4 as an entree or 2 as a main. If you're starting from scratch now, you want a basic risotto base. Anything too complicated will get lost when you turn the risotto into cakes and fry them.
Basic risotto
photo credit: Glorious risotto
My basic risotto starts with a cup of arborio rice (carnaroli is better, but I always only seem to have arborio in the pantry), a small brown onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, butter and olive oil, white wine and chicken or vegetarian stock. Homemade stock has a far superior flavour but if you've got some tetra packs of stock in the pantry then use them, I do.
Simmer the stock (about 5 cups should do it) and keep warm on the stove over a low heat.
Heat the butter and olive oil in a large pan with the chopped garlic and then add the onion, finely chopped, to soften. Don't brown it.
Add the rice at lowish heat and toast it, stirring, until covered in the oil and butter and you can hear the rice start to crack.
Add about 1/4 cup of white wine now, stirring until mostly absorbed. Add another 1/4 cup of wine for the pot and a glass for you.
Now gradually add the stock to the rice, about 1/2 cup at a time, stirring as you go.
Add more stock as it gets absorbed and continue until the rice gets fat and swollen and lovely. You want the risotto to be al dente and creamy.
Add a few good handfuls of freshly grated parmesan (the powder in the green tin is not parmesan, it is dirty sock scrapings) and season well.
Stir through some fresh breadcrumbs and put the risotto in the fridge to cool while you prepare the other bits and pieces to go with it. (If you use dried breadcrumbs the roof probably won't cave in and I won't tell on you.)
Photo credit: Homegrown roma tomatoes
Sweet Balsamic Tomatoes
I'm pretty sure the tomatoes are originally from a Delicious magazine recipe.
You'll need a couple of roma tomatoes, quartered.
Seal them on each cut side in a frypan over high heat, then add 1 TB of brown sugar, 2 TB balsamic vinegar, a tsp of Worcestershire sauce and a TB of water.
Drop the heat to low, pop the lid on and cook for a few minutes.
Make the Risotto Cakes
While that's happening, mix an egg into the risotto mixture and divide into 4 or 6 cakes, depending on how much risotto you have.
You don't want arancini size for this, but you don't want them to be so big and cumbersome that they will fall apart when you put them into the pan.
Wrap each cake in a few pieces of proscuitto. A few sage leaves can work nicely with this too.
Shallow fry the cakes in a bit of oil for a few minutes either side in a frypan over medium heat, until the cakes are golden and the proscuitto is crisping.
Serve the cakes over some nice peppery rocket and top with the tomatoes and some shaved parmesan and pretend that it was hard work.
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