Home Cooking

In the past few years, I've been trying to slowly expand the list of things I can cook. Staples like rice and pasta were among the earliest items in my mental recipe book, and poached eggs are a highlight added last year.

After enjoying cooking with cast iron in the Yukon, I've acquired a cast iron skillet of my own for all frying purposes. I'm certainly attracted to the idea of a pan being imbued with all the flavors it encounters over time. Experiments with steak have been tasty, but not really restaurant quality. Burgers seem to be much easier. In fact, after making my first simple burger, adding nothing but ketchup and a slice of cheese, I became impressed by how bland and dry McDonald's burgers are. Maybe it's something about mass production. Alternatively, overcooking burgers is probably a good way to avoid food poisoning liability.

Generic Cereal

When I first started grocery shopping on my own, one of the things that surprised me most was how expensive most cereal was; you could shell out four dollars for a box that empties surprisingly quickly, especially if you have a big bowl.

From the ingredients, you wouldn't think cereal has a reason to be expensive, and the existence of generic cereals bears this point out. All the major cereal brands have been imitated at about half the price, and the sweetness of saving money balances any taste difference in my mind. The most extremely generic cereal I've had is Tesco Everyday Value Cornflakes, costing a staggering 31 pence for a 500g box. Either the UK government subsidizes basic foodstuffs or Kellogg's is printing money with their $3.99 cornflake option.

To top it all off, I find the names of generic cereals very endearing. Toasty-Os and Fruity-Os top the list of my favorite cereal names, followed by the lengthy names describing the shape and material of well-known brands (chocolate rice clumps and so on). There's always more to say on the topic of generics, but for now I'm off to enjoy a bowl of Honey Nut Toasted Oats Cereal.

Simple Ramen

I grew up with ramen noodles in Nigeria, specifically Indomie, a brand that I just learned comes from Indonesia. Apparently Indomie introduced instant noodles to Nigeria in the 1990s and now has the largest instant noodle factory in Africa there. In college in Atlanta, I was introduced to more gourmet types of ramen, with all sorts of vegetables and fancy meats, and maybe an egg or something. The recipe below is the start of my attempts to have fancy ramen with minimal effort.

Ingredients
5 C water
2 packs instant noodles
2 C frozen vegetables
1 can Vienna sausages (the canned kind)

Put water on to heat in pot and add vegetables. Chop up Vienna sausages and add to pot. When water boils, add instant noodles. Cook for 3 minutes, remove from heat, and add seasoning packets.

So far I haven't found a shortcut for putting an egg in.

Simple Hot Drinks

Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that I like drinking hot drinks but not making hot drinks. Just having to boil water as a first step makes the average hot drink more complicated to prepare than the average cold drink.

Buying hot drinks is, of course, an option, but as many people have calculated, costs add up quickly if you make a habit of it. What I need to find, then, is a tasty hot drink that I can prepare at home with minimal time and effort.

Hot chocolate is a good place to start-- using a mix, preparing hot chocolate is as simple as adding powder to boiling water and stirring. However, the real giants of the hot drink world are tea and coffee.

If simplicity is the goal, any drink that needs to have milk or sugar added won't cut it. With these rules, herbal tea seems like a good place to start. Without the influence of a sweetener, it can be fun to explore the tastes of different leaves and plant parts. Ultimately, my journey has led me to Twinings English Breakfast tea (a black tea) as a pleasantly generic hot drink that can be made with very little effort. I have a few herbal teas for niche situations.

When you take a step back, though, plain water is still the champion of simplicity. It tastes pretty good too.

Field Station Lunch

When I was in the Yukon, I found myself eating a lot more than I had in college. Working outdoors, I suppose, does make exercise easier. There wasn't a lot of time for breakfast, so I usually just had a bowl of cereal in the morning, but lunch was more substantial. I ended up eating the same thing for lunch more often than not, because it was simple, warm, and filling.

1. Toast 4 bagel halves

2. Fry 3 eggs

3. Put the eggs on the bagels

4. Grate some cheese over everything

5. Top it all off with ketchup

The fourth, eggless bagel half would have some jam or Nutella spread on to be my dessert course.

The Mystery of Pesto

During my first year in Atlanta, it became apparent that pesto was the fashionable condiment on the block. Getting a sandwich at Subway? "Oh, can I have pesto on hat?" Cooking up some pasta in the dorm kitchen? "Yeah, just some pesto on it, it'll be like a real meal!" At the time, I didn't know what pesto was, but I did know what relish was, and making assumptions is a lot easier than looking things up.

Just recently, I bought a jar of pesto for myself to finally crack the mystery of this green substance. I found, as many people might, that pesto is generally a mixture of basil, pine nuts, and olive oil, but more importantly, it may just be the most flexible condiment I know (behind mayonnaise and butter). Ketchup and mustard can be overpowering, but a bit of pesto could go well on anything from a hamburger to a breakfast bagel.

Pesto also made a good base for the buffalo worm sandwich I had today. I've been trying for the past two weeks to write a blog post not about insects, but it looks like that will have to wait for another time.

One Dish Pasta

When cooking for myself, I tend to get stuck in ruts, making the same dishes over and over. It's not the best situation, but it does let me hone recipes to perfection, i.e. the simplest possible without completely sacrificing taste. Here's my current method for making pasta:

1. Boil 1.5 L of water in electric kettle.

2. Make a cup of tea and pour the rest of the water into a saucepan.

3. Put the saucepan on medium heat and add about 2 C dry pasta.

4. Place a jar of pasta sauce in the saucepan alongside the pasta.

5. When the pasta is cooked and the pasta sauce is warm, combine them in a large bowl.

Using this method, the only dishes that really need washing are a bowl and a spoon. The tea is optional, but I usually make it because the kitchen is cold.

Beans on Toast

I enjoy a lot of hot breakfast foods like bacon and eggs and pancakes, but I'm rarely willing to spend the time and effort required to make them. Beans on toast, however, is a whole other ballgame.

To create a fuller British experience I had the beans on toast with tea. The total prep time was around six minutes: boiling water, microwaving tinned beans, and toasting toast all at once. The only dishes needed are a plate, a mug, and a spoon.

The only issue now is actually waking up in time to have a meal called breakfast.

College Kitchen Part 2

I've written before about the utensils and dishes I've collected and cooked with for the past couple years, but traveling to a different country meant getting rid of those things and starting again. At the moment, I have:

A saucepan with a lid
Several plastic cups
Several metal spoons
A few ceramic mugs
A pair of chopsticks

The saucepan and the spoons are most versatile; food can be fried or boiled in the pan and eaten straight from it. A good spoon can fill the role of a knife and fork. The mugs are for drinking tea, of course.

Jelly Donuts and Jammy Doughnuts

One big difference between living in England and living in the US is the stuff I get at the grocery store. It would be possible to not change my diet--Tesco advertises a few shelves of imported 'American' food like Oreos--but I wouldn't want to pass up the cultural experience. Over the past few months, I've been introduced to a number of English snacks with great names: Jammie Dodgers, Jaffa Cakes, Hobnobs, and more.

One nice thing about the grocery stores here is the wide choice of cheese, as opposed to Walmart's range (Cheddar, Mozzarella, Colby Jack, Pepper Jack, Colby Jack marbled with Cheddar, Cheddar marbled with Mozzarella, and maybe Gouda if you're lucky). On the other hand, many of the new cheeses have fancy characteristics like rinds that I'm not quite sure what to do with. I may not be ready for that sort of culture.

Sushi Haiku

Sushi and soy sauce
A party of flavors but
Very expensive

Meat, Potatoes and Veg

At St Peters College, meals are served in a dining hall complete with long tables and portraits hanging on the walls. For lunch and dinner, a meal has three main parts: meat, potatoes and vegetables. I was surprised to see so many potatoes; every meal so far has had at least one potato option, usually two. Salads and desserts are available off to the side. I haven't seen any potato salad, though, so I suppose things aren't as potato-intensive as they could be.

Ham and Cheese

American supermarkets are all about making meals more convenient. I've seen jars of mixed peanut butter and jelly; with one of those, a PBJ sandwich should take half as long to make. More recently, I saw the equivalent for another sandwich staple: ham and cheese. It's a cube of processed, sliced ham like one would usually see, but nuggets of swiss cheese are insinuated throughout the loaf. What a great idea.

Where does food convenience go from here? I would be happy with a hotdog sausage engineered to have ketchup, mustard, and relish in its core. As things currently stand, I like hotdogs but they're more difficult to eat than I would like.

Scrambled Egg Recipe

Whene'er I cook up scrambled eggs,
I use the same instructions.
A recipe worked out
Through many scrambled egg productions:

Step one: Fry two eggs in a pan
Let whites become opaque
Step two: Attempt to flip them and
Step three: Make a mistake

Optimal Bread

Paying more for food usually has diminishing returns; the difference in quality between a $3 box of cereal and a $4 box of cereal is more than the difference between $4 cereal and $5 cereal.

Depending on how much grocery money you have, then, you can optimize purchases for the best balance quality and price. After a couple weeks of eating PBJ sandwiches, I think a loaf of bread is best in the $1.50 to $2.00 range-- the stuff I've bought below that price is much worse but I can't taste much improvement past the $2 mark.

I don't think I've ever bought peanut butter I don't like, so now I just need to find the optimal jelly price and I'm set.

Cuisine Connoisseur

A weekend in Charleston, South Carolina allowed me to experience new types of Southern cuisine. One dish that stuck out was fried chicken with a sweet tea glaze, a tasty fusion of stereotypes. The chicken was juicy on the inside with a crunchy coating; flavors were finely balanced and perfectly complemented with a side of buttery mashed potatoes.

Surprisingly enough, I had had a similar meal not too long ago: ten chicken nuggets with honey-mustard sauce and medium fries. The chicken was dry and uniform in texture; the fried nugget coating was savory and cardboard-like. The french fries were hot and salty, very tasty when dipped in the provided sauce, as were the nuggets.

I enjoyed both meals; sweet and savory chicken with a side of potatoes gets me every time.

Ways of Eating

I had rice and beans for lunch today and sushi for supper-- two very different eating experiences. The plate of rice and beans was my own preparation, as simple as possible. It was warm and savory and had uniform taste and texture. I shoveled through with the largest spoon I have.

Sushi (which I haven't had before) was complex and vibrant. Each piece had its own array of flavors and I had two sauces to dip things in. Some parts were crunchy and some parts were chewy.

What was the real difference between the two meals?  I would borrow an old expression and say one is eating for the stomach and the other for the mouth. The rice and beans tasted good, but my main reason for eating them was that I wanted to take nutrients and introduce them to my digestive system. Sushi filled me up, but I was more interested in the party my taste buds were having.

Cooking Beans

I've been cooking a lot of dried beans recently and was impressed with how long they take to become edible. Why do beans need to soak before cooking?

The soaking apparently shortens cooking times, removes toxins in some cases, and preserves nutrients and texture. I suppose it's worth it.

What about rinsing, though? One source said that beans should be rinsed because they're dirty-- any sort of rinsing or washing during processing and packaging might make the beans sprout. The beans passed my personal test of looking clean and smelling clean. Could there be bacteria? Probably, but by now I assume there's bacteria on everything that hasn't come out of an autoclave in the past five minutes. I was eating yogurt while thinking about this, so I decided to think about something else.

I found a small rock mixed in with my pinto beans, which made me think of home. Just like bacteria and yogurt, it's an experience all about context: a crunch fine with hard-shell tacos, but when your rice and beans crunch it's a whole other deal.

One article mentioned pesticides on un-rinsed beans, and I ended up deciding that rinsing beans would be easier than learning about pesticides.

Oreo Ratios

Every now and then I buy a pack of Oreos as a special treat. They're certainly tasty, but I've always found that the biscuit to filling ratio is a bit too high for my liking. Recently, I got some Double Stuf Oreos to see if extra filling would fix my problem. These new Oreos were also good, but this time too sweet, with too much filling. All in all, I think a 1.5 Stuf Oreo would just about hit the spot.

Baked With Real Fruit

To celebrate the 4th of July, I got a box of patriotic Poptarts that had red filling and blue icing with white stars. As with many Poptarts, a message on the front of the box said, "Baked with Real Fruit!*" I eventually found the "*" on the back of the box. "Baked with Real Fruit!" means "Filling made with equal to 10% fruit."

A quick look at the ingredients list reveals that these Poptarts as a whole are made with "two percent or less of ... dried strawberries, dried pears, [and] dried apples." I'm sure this adds up to the advertised 10% of the filling. Interestingly, while each fruit Poptart contains the fruit advertised, they additionally all contain apples. The blueberry Poptarts also have grapes.

Having learned all that, I take issue with another statement on the front of the box: "Naturally & Artificially Strawberry Flavored." The ingredients don't get any more specific, simply saying, "natural and artificial flavor." Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure I'm not tasting the less than 2% dried strawberry in the filling-- I would have to be some sort of mouth sleuth for that.

Am I going to stop eating Poptarts? No, I just think it's interesting to know what's in them. I'm waiting for the first strawberry Poptart box that boasts "No Natural Products Included, 100% Artificial."