Clearly the new cooking chapter. Let’s see how it evolves, building on our fundamentals, expanding on some of the stuff and really, primarily, learning to have a bloody good time in the kitchen.
From here, I bring you some of the best of the best dishes that anyone can make and make super super awesome. Many dishes will be straight from my heart, from the space of my relationship with Mum, chicken schnitzel for example. We’ll continue to talk about love, family, loss, gain and all that good stuff too.
We’ll only make simple dishes of course, simple makes awesome easy. Most stuff will be made by me, occasionally there may be something made by another that fits our scope.
Scope, simple healthy foods we can all make without the necessity for a full kitchen or complicated expensive gadgets. Stuff that anyone can make just about anywhere. Of course, we will use these simple beautiful dishes to continue opening up the story of what goes into our bodies, how it affects them and things we can apply so they only affect us in the most beneficial way.
Let’s get cooking, see you soon.
The man can cook, chicken schnitty
Yep, warning, absolute warning, food porn!!
Chicken schnitzel, God it is good. Just so very very good, and really importantly, ridiculously easy.
I wasn’t exactly correct when I said in part one that pancakes were about the only birthday food I wanted when Mum asked. Chicken schnitzel was always rattling around in the head as the major choice too. Pancakes generally won out but the pollo (chicken in Spanish) sometimes got its way.
Going to put this out there too, Mum’s were absolutely great but mine blow hers completely out of the water. Fuck I do schnitty well, like perfect, absolutely mastered this one.
Firstly, the plate is clearly a balanced plate. Big load of salad, some cheese, cashew nuts, avocado, a little fruit, whole heap of good stuff. About a third of the plate is carbohydrates, the potato, the final third protein. Looking at somewhere between 150 and 200 grams of chicken here. Some left over too, will become wraps tomorrow for lunch. Perfect.
Just absolutely love cooking, love it with all my heart and then some. Had the music blaring, banging out the tunes from my mouth, having a dance. No cannabis either, no drugs at all, I’m serious about this, getting rid of all that shit now. To be honest too ladies, yeah I am going to continually talk to you in part two Woman. To be honest ladies I am a bloody good singer and dancer too, seems like a bit of a shame to keep it all to myself.
Also, bloody shame to not be sharing this stupid beautiful plate of food with you. The chicken itself almost made me cream my pants, God is it good, reckon I may have mentioned this already.
Super ridiculously simple too.
Not going to go into the cooking of it, you remember the steak from Get back in the kitchen, Man? Well you cook it exactly the same way. Bit of an exception though, juices won’t start to come out of this one, you have to pay attention. Nothing too hot here, keep the pan at a nice easy sizzle all the way through, don’t want a heap of steam and noise.
Nice and gentle.
Potatoes parboiled in water first. Hold on, parboiling, new term. Simply means we cook them in water until they start to go soft, not completely soft. Also, the water, add the potatoes when it is cold, heat it all up on the stove together. Once it is where you want then drain the water, dry the spuds a little, fry them in some olive oil, no baking option where I am, so this works great too. Any oil really but extra virgin olive oil is the gold standard when it comes to cooking oils.
The chicken, need three plates, well two and a bowl.
Plate one add about a quarter of a cup of flour for every piece of chicken. I generally use the thigh, my favourite part, super juicy. Leave the skin on too, all though this will increase the saturated fat content. Fuck it, we’ll discuss this next heading, types of fats, mentioned it too many times to ignore now. You don’t need to bash the chicken flat but you can, it’ll cook quicker and more evenly, probably not the worst tip when one is learning to cook. Make it easy on yourself.
Bones too, keeping them in adds heaps of flavour to the dish, miss out a bit if you get rid of them. Can even cut the meat off and toss the bone in the pan with it, the flavour will benefit everything.
Plate one – quarter of a cup of flour to each piece of chicken, two to three drumsticks if you are using them. To the plate add your favourite seasoning. I usually use a Middle Eastern one, ras el hanout, generally make it myself. But any seasoning you like that goes with chicken will do.
We want enough seasoning so that when it is mixed into the flour the flour starts to take on the colour of it. Not too much colour, but obvious to know there is enough in there. It’ll seem like a lot of spice, it is, but it does not dominate as we only use a light coating of flour.
Bowl one (plate two), one egg per two pieces of chicken, beat it up, beat it real good. Beating eggs, get a fork and mix and mix and mix until it becomes a nice even colour, is all it means. If you are not sure it will be enough egg mix, add another egg, or a drop of milk does the job of beefing it up too.
Plate three, start with bread crumbs, same ratios as the flour. Couple of day old or stale bread is great if you have a blender to chop it up super fine. Add to this a small finely diced garlic clove, about a quarter of an onion (any colour) finely diced again. and some finely diced chilli. I’ll generally finely grate some parmesan in there and add some parsley too, didn’t have a grater or parsley today. No biggie, already mentioned it is fantastic as it is.
Sometimes I’ll dice up a bit of bacon and chuck it on plate three too. You can understand where we are going here hey? Another recipe which arms you with an absolute shitload of variations and options. Can make it whatever you want, turn the schnitzel into parmigiana, absolute Aussie favourite. Can use other meats, even do it with eggplant and other veges, all that good stuff. Like, it is a super great thing to know how to cook, super SUPER great.
Now, with your chicken start at plate one and move to plate three, from three to the pan. A light even coat of flour to start with, make sure the chicken is evenly covered, shake off the excess. The flour creates a foundation that will basically end up as being food glue. Did not do this part once upon a time until Rachel queried me on it. Without the flour mix it was good, but post, bonkers good.
Thanks Rachel, love you Bud. She despises me calling her bud, so I kept calling her bud, kind of got used to it. Funny as hell.
Now dip it in the egg mix, again making sure it is completely covered, shake off the excess.
Third, yep of course, coat with the bread crumbs. You want a good coat of this, make sure the whole chicken is covered evenly.
The cooking, enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan, a light covering but not so light you are trying to work out if the pan is covered or not. You want it to be covered. Sizzle, light sizzle all the way through, no loud noises and crazy steam, we need to cook this for a while. Chicken MUST be cooked through properly. The pan is too hot and it will burn well before the chicken is cooked.
Ever hear of salmonella? Can make you super super sick, raw chicken a major major perpetrator.
To start with, if you are not confident cooking the whole breast, thigh, whatever, cut it up into smaller bits, dip each bit as per the above and now when you cook it will be much simpler to get right without undercooking or burning. Then, when you get confident and continue to make it, which you will because it is so damn good and easy, in time you will master it.
Easy peasy.
Finally, we use a bit of oil here so when the chicken is cooked through place it on some paper towel, I used toilet paper today as it was all I had, does the same job of removing the excess oil.
Bob’s your Uncle, happy creaming your pants eating your own food like I pretty much did tonight.
The fats in our food
Expensive day here today, spent about $40, remembering all moneys are Aussie dollar. About $57 if you take into account the accommodation.
The place I stay, was wrong about it, said cleaning once a week, it’s every three days. Awesome, awesome, can simply concentrate on having a bloody good time.
$15 for good coffee beans the major expense, lasts a couple of weeks. The other $25 went to all the stuff on the plate, needed to buy it all bar the flour. Needed spices and all. Also bought me breakfast; two coffees, juice, a bread roll, croissant, bowl of fruit, granola and yoghurt, couple of eggs sunny side up, bit of bacon.
Also paid for a session in the gym, visited the thermal baths, had to buy a swimming cap too and, of course, a packet of darts.
Come on Australia, let us leave!
Oh, plus the cashews. Cannot forget the cashews, they are our segway into talking about fat.
Cashews when they are natural and raw are full of great unsaturated fats, but FULL of them, when cooked the unsaturated fats change slightly, the stability of them. Now, it does not necessarily mean they become the bad saturated fats, and the information I read says it doesn’t change them too much but it also doesn’t have clear information on what the change does to us.
It doesn’t matter because all they needed to do in our conversation is introduce these two terms, unsaturated and saturated fat. There are many more words under these two headings, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, others but this is for you to discover, just the basics here buddies.
The difference is in the chemical structure, unsaturated fats have one or more double bonds, whereas saturated fats have zero. Yeah, technical I know, we’ll open it up as we go. One is bigger, the other smaller, all we need, double chemical bonds bigger.
We can see this process in the fridge to identify each type. Chuck oil or fat in the fridge and when it goes cold will either stay as it is, a liquid, or become solid.
Solid equals saturated fat, primarily come from the animal world. With exceptions, such as coconut oil, but we do not talk to this one, too complicated, the jury still isn’t completely settled on its usage. So, fat goes hard in cold temperatures and we can be very certain we are dealing with saturated fats.
It does not go solid, can basically guarantee we are dealing with unsaturated fats. Primarily come from the world of flora, plants.
Margarine versus butter, margarine is the better option, much much better option. Your complaints and singing and dancing right now is ignorance good buddy. Do some research, proper research and you will start to understand that, yes, once upon a time margarine was terrible, it was in the processing, however, now, it is a significantly better healthier option for our bodies than butter.
Butter, many types now are being made from a plant base so it is getting better too.
Too much saturated fat in our diet can, and very often does, lead to increasing cholesterol levels, and therefore increasing the risk of heart disease.
Cholesterol, quickly, is naturally formed in the body, our bodies create enough by itself. The fat in animal products, saturated fat, can increase these levels to an unsustainable level and much like adipose tissue builds up. This time the buildup is in our arteries and it gets stuck there. The buildup is called plaque, yeah, much like on your teeth. It can keep building and building and buiilding until it restricts blood flow and the outcome is heart disease, attack or stroke.
The mechanism behind it is simple to understand too from a basic language perspective. There is so much to learn, for instance the saturated fats are known as LDL, low-density lipoprotein, the unsaturated HDL, high-density lipoprotein.
Of course, difficult words, but we don’t need the whole thing to understand further, only the low-density and high-density aspect is important for our purposes.
Saturated fats, LDL, low density. Unsaturated fats, HDL, high density. One is thin, LDL, the other thick, HDL.
Now, pretty sure we’ll understand together and be able to move on.
Saturated low-density fats streaming around in the blood can be picked up by little knicks, bubbles, irregularities in the artery and simply get stuck there. When some get stuck, then others start to get stuck too, there is a build up in the artery, a wall being created so to speak, keeps building and building. Forms a gathering of plaque, the gathering gets too big and, well, already mentioned the results.
Unsaturated high-density fats are much bigger, they do not get picked up and stuck in the artery like their low-density counterparts. Instead, they perform a really important function, pick up the shit, including saturated fats and plaque hanging around in the artery and take them away. Basically helps to clean up the plaque buildup, brings our arteries back to good health.
Now, obviously the first thing we want to do here is reduce the saturated fats rather than increase the unsaturated. Fat, the word fat, is in both examples. Fat, we know what it does yeah? Makes you fat if you have too much, clearly, obviously.
So, the key is to reduce saturated fat without excessively increasing unsaturated. In fact, start by reducing the bad and not increasing the good, it will make a hell of a difference to your everyday health and your waistline.
Replace is great too, swap butter for margarine, swap your current cooking oil for extra virgin olive oil, reduce animal fats.
Reduce animal fats, clearly this is simple to understand how to do. The white stuff on your meat which does not look like meat, cut it off. Remove skins, skin is high in saturated fat.
That’s it really, all one needs to know, especially if you know how to read a food label. I really really hope you do by now. Unsaturated and saturated fats are a category in every label for every food and drink product in Australia.
Meatless
Fuck that’s good, the words that came out of my mouth when tasting tonight’s dinner. Vege soup, vegan friendly et al, this one the base recipe comes from, in my opinion, the best of the best cooking sites, Recipe Tin Eats.
This lady, phenomenal cook, more importantly the recipes are super SUPER duper easy. The bowl here clearly shows some differences to hers, potatoes and spinach for example. A dish like this is the best of the best thing to use up all the left over vegetables in the fridge, cupboard, pantry, on the table.
On this note, the fruit and vegetables in this pueblo (town) in Ecuador, holy moly, simply holy moly. There is a permanent market, it is good, but then there is the one that is only open a few days per week. It is pure heaven, pure pure food heaven. Could have stayed there for hours.
The recipe, another that gives you many many variations to play with. Generally I would turn it into a type of minestrone by adding pasta to it, bulks it all up. However, today, and at the moment I do not need too many carbohydrates at night. Without cannabis I am energy, non-stop, non-tiring energy. Need bugger all sleep, but love sleep, the body needs it so keep it solid, maintain a consistent sleep pattern.
Can also add rice to it, beans, chick peas, lentils, black beans, any anything really. If you want meat it up too, but cook the meat first before everything, the flavour will add additional awesome to the pan, remove it when it is cooked through. Be careful if using bacon or other salty meats, will need to reduce the salt content in the recipe to compensate. Add the meat again in the last five or so minutes of cooking and it will maintain its beautiful texture, add too early and will not be as good.
Sausages, absolutely awesome in these types of dishes. Made enough soup for about five bowls, three or four sausages will enhance everything and then some. Cook the snags whole first, wait for them to cool down, chop ’em into bite size pieces, add them near the end. Pura-bloody-vida. Again, salt, sausages and salt go together, you will unlikely need to add any of the salt in the recipe. Will also need to pay attention to the stock, read the label, minimal to no salt.
The bread, garlic bread, that’s all me. LOVE garlic! Great stuff. Simple simple too, good amount of margarine. Yes margarine, still froffin’ anti-margariners? Well, yep, you are still ignorant too. Research, proper research, look up the data not just the one person, possibly your Grandma, telling you otherwise. They, maties, are ignorant as ignorant too! Yeah mate, your Grandmother is an ignorant fuck, tell her to pull her head in, pull your own in at the same time.
To the margarine, for these two pieces of bread, finely dice a garlic clove. Then, with the flat of the blade, squash it down onto the chopping board and pull the knife towards you, sharp part facing away. Guess what? You’ll already know, fresh crushed garlic! Fresh stuff, the best of the best.
Yeah, you can use the store bought pre-crushed stuff but this is terrible in comparison to freshly crushing it yourself. Now, add a good pinch of salt, a small pinch of pepper and mix it all together.
Cooking, no oil, you already have margarine. Chuck it on a pan, gentle sizzle, start with the non-garlic side, then turn her over and cook it until it looks like mine does here. Pure brilliance buds, just brilliance, and garlic bread, as we all know, is super awesome fun to eat.
That’s it, Mary’s your Aunty, simple simple. Real comfort food, the whole thing.
The fruit bowl, not part of dinner, education. Easiest way to bring fruit into the diet, keep them out in a place where you walk past or access regularly. Cannot be ignored, pick one up whenever. Especially good to place them somewhere that they take the attention from other unhealthy snacks, you’ll at least have a mini battle going on in the head when you go to choose your snack.
Yeah, the other snacks will win out often, but the fruit will have their day too, starting point.
Quickly, zesting the lime or lemon as per the recipe, means removing the peel and peel only. Easiest to use a fine grater or a vegetable peeler. The main thing you want to pay attention to is avoiding the white sponge type layer between the colourful zest and the fruit. No stress if your skills aren’t there yet though. The white stuff can add a bitterness to the dish, therefore make it less enjoyable. The difference is marginal (small) but it is a difference.