COOKING

Is cooking time consuming?

Many people don’t cook because no one ever showed them how to or at least never talked to them about how easy it is to make very simple to very tasty, great looking dishes.

Complex recipes are time consuming but simple dishes can be made in as little as 10 minutes!

General Information: Pasta, rice, or potatoes cut into small pieces boil in a pot in 10 minutes in ordinary water! After 10 minutes add a little salt, pepper and oil and serve immediately with some grated cheese. An easy dish for anyone who has never cooked before!

Meat, poultry and fish cut into small pieces fried in a pan in extra virgin olive oil over at a low temperature (i.e. just one setting below maximum on the cooker so that the oil does not burn) will be ready in 10-12 minutes. Simply turn with a wooden spoon every 2 minutes. Once the time is up, add a little salt, pepper or some other spice whose flavour you know well and it’s ready to eat!

For those who don’t know, nowadays all foods need to be boiled for 5-10 minutes then the water changed or then roasted or fried or boiled again quite simply because vegetables contain many nitrates and nitrites from excessive use of fertilisers, whereas food of animal origin often contains hormones and other residues of drugs (antibiotics) and by boiling food part of them dissolve in the water! Those that really need to be boiled are the vegetables that were grown in the soil such as carrots, potatoes, onions, beetroot and radishes, etc.

I found some useful tips on the internet that I have tried with great success. I’ve listed them below for you:

• To ensure that eggs don’t break when being boiled, smear the surface with some lemon juice. If you want hard-boiled eggs, don’t let them boil for more than 8-10 minutes if you want to avoid dark areas between the yolk and the white appearing. To easily peel eggs, put them in cold water for a couple of minutes once they are boiled.
• To stop oil from the frying pan splattering everywhere, before the oil gets too hot in the pan, add a little salt.
• If you add too much salt to food, add a peeled potato to the pot and let the food simmer for another 15 minutes. The potato will absorb the excess salt In a very salty sauce, put a sugar cube on the spoon and dip it into the sauce and boil it for a while without letting the sugar drop into the sauce.
• If you need red wine to finish off a recipe and don’t have any, replace it with a little bit of vinegar and a small pinch of sugar.
• To avoid béchamel sauce going lumpy, when you add the milk do not stop stirring. If the béchamel sauce still goes lumpy, put it in the mixer immediately or the blender and beat for a few seconds.
• If the batter for crepes goes lumpy, you can put it through the sieve and break up the lumps with the back of a spoon.
• If hot oil spits from a pan or you burn your hand on the oven, cut a slice of onion and cover the wound with it. It will bring relief and the onion will also stop a blister forming.
• If you cut yourself cooking, put some Greek coffee on the wound immediately to stop the bleeding.
• If you put a red apple along with unripe green tomatoes or kiwi fruit, in 2-3 days the tomatoes will have gone red and the kiwi fruit will have softened. The same happens if you add a piece of banana peel instead of apple.

• To stop potatoes going rotten, put 2-3 green apples in the place where you keep them In general potatoes that are green contain solanine which is toxic and need to be thrown out. The same goes for bread. Put an apple sliced in half in the bread bin and the bread will stay fresher for longer.
• To ensure that fried potatoes are soft inside and crispy outside, fry them at a low temperature, remove them from the oil before the go brown and let them go cold. Then put them in very hot oil for 2-3 minutes until they go golden. You will achieve the same result if you cut them into big pieces and boil them for a while before frying them.
• To make fried potatoes tastier, add a green pepper or a piece of rosemary or two sage leaves to the oil you will fry them in.
• When you want to coat food in breadcrumbs, to ensure that the breadcrumbs stick better to the food, put the food in the fridge for a while before frying it.

• To remove the bitterness from aubergines, cut them in the way the recipe suggests and put them in layers in the colander and sprinkle some salt on each layer. Put a plate that is smaller than the colander and press down with both palms. Leave them for at least 1 hour. Then rinse well and dry with kitchen paper or a tea towel.
• To ensure that aubergines or courgettes that you plan to fry- don’t absorb too much oil, put them in some water once you cut them. Then dry them and fry them.

• To stop pasta from becoming soggy, add it to the pot all at once, after the water has already started to boil. Don’t boil it so that it expands and becomes white. Drain and leave under plenty of running water. Shake the colander so that the water leaves and then mix immediately with the sauce or some oil,
• Add salt to the water that you are boiling the minute it begins to bubble. If you add salt from the outset it will take longer to boil.
• Honey crystallises over time. It will become liquid again if you dip the jar into hot water or if you heat it in a bain-marie.

• To ensure you don’t cry every time you are peeling onions, place them in hot or salted water for a minute first. You can also peel them with the tap on. You could also wear sunglasses!
• Rice can be coloured in many natural ways. If you add some saffron the rice will go yellow whereas some curry powder will make it go orange. It you add some spinach leaves ground up in the blender it will go green.
• To keep the grains of pilaf rice separate, add a spoonful of oil when the rice is boiling.
• To stop your hands smelling badly every time you peel onions or garlic or handle fish, rub them with lemon halves or vinegar.
• If you don’t have a special steam cooker, put the food in a metal colander that fits inside the pot and cover with aluminium foil.
• To avoid bad smells in the kitchen after cooking fish, put a piece of aluminium foil folded in four on the kitchen ring with a spoonful of sugar on it. The smell of the burnt sugar will mask the smell of the fish.
• To get rid of the bad smell of cauliflower that is boiling, add an apple to the water or place some cotton wool with vinegar on the lid of the pot.
• The black bottoms of pans and pots can be easily cleaned by rubbing them with newspaper soaked in vinegar and salt.

• If your glasses are dull because of water salts. Fill them with water and add a few drops of ammonia. Leave them overnight and then rinse in plenty of water the next day. Another solution is to put them in boiling water that contains some lemon juice.
• To polish silver dinner services, cutlery and jewellery, put a piece of aluminium foil at the bottom of a bowl. Fill with hot water and add a spoonful of baking soda. Add the silver and it there until it is clean.