The Kitchen Series: Method Cooking
(I know I said there wasn't going to be any KS posts this week...but the farmers market gave me something great to write about so I couldn't keep it in!)
Today was farmers market day in my area. I picked up a few things that I would normally buy, radishes, spring onions, baby portabella's and snap peas. But as I was walking around I saw something I have never cooked with before....Fennel. I keep hearing about how "black licorice" it tastes and since that is one flavor I can't stand I have never bought any. Well today for some reason I had to buy it...and so one baby head came home with me.
Once home I sat here and tried to figure out what to do with it. I have never really looked at recipes with it in it because I though I didn't like it. I remembered seeing a recipe with fennel in it at the kitchn, so I went a hunting. I didn't really find anything I had all the ingredients for so I decided to make up my own.
That brings us to what this Kitchen series post is about... Method cooking. Or as some call it intuitive cooking. What I consider method cooking is learning the basic way to do something, ie braising a roast or making stock, and then tweaking the method in the recipe to work for something else. Part of method cooking is using recipes to find out what you like, so you can then play with those tastes to make wonderful food without a recipe. It is learning what spices and flavors go with what types of cooking. Knowing what tastes match with french, asian or italian cooking. Method cooking allows you a lot more leeway with ingredients and opens a whole new world of fun cooking up to you.
One of the main components of Method cooking is the pantry, drygoods and spices that we have been talking about since the begining of the series. Having that well stocked means that you are ready to come home and cook what you picked up on a whim like I did this morning at the market. I'm going to show you how this worked for me....with the meal I whipped up for supper tonight.
In my search for a recipe I looked at the directions for how to prepare fennel. Most of them said to slice very thin with a mandolin and drop in to cold water with a little lemon juice (to keep it from browning) or to toss with a dressing right a way. Since I already knew I wanted to make a salad out of it that meant the tossing with dressing would work great for me.
When I checked the fridge to see what I needed to use up before I went out of town tomorrow, I saw that I had a couple of boiled eggs and a few small boiled red potatoes, along with some olives, scallions/green onions, carrots and the baby bella's from the market trip. Boiled eggs and potatoes in a salad always sound awesome to me since I love a good nicoise and everything else I love on a salad.
So I set to making my salad. My ingredients were:
one small bulb fennel, fronds removed but saved
one small carrot, peeled
one scallion
8-10 olives
4-5 baby bella mushrooms
2 boiled red potatoes
2 hard boiled eggs
Balsamic vinegar
olive oil
salt
pepper
In a bowl I mixed my fave balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing. The fennel was then cut on the mandolin at the thinest size and mixed into the dressing. The carrots, scallion and mushrooms were all thinly sliced and added to the dressing/fennel mix. The olives were pitted, cut in half and added. The potatoes and eggs were cut in quarters.
On a plate I laid a couple leave of romaine lettuce. In the middle I piled my fennel mixture and then surrounded it by the eggs and potatoes. I seasoned the eggs and potatoes with salt and pepper to taste and garnished the whole plate with the reserved feathery fennel fronds.
And this is what I ended up with.....
Now if we look at what I did we see I used parts and pieces of 3 recipes to make this dish. The one I checked for preparation tips on fennel, the dressing recipe that I have memorized from use, and a basic nicoise salad recipe, that I also know from use. By using methods from all these recipes I had a wonderful tasty dinner on my plate in no time!
Learning to play with methods from different recipes will give you lots of new things to try and wonderful food to eat. It will also keep you from having to eating take out or pizza on a night when you really don't want to follow a recipe, since you know what you like and the method to make it!
Previous Kitchen Series Posts
- The Kitchen Series: Tools I love....
- The Kitchen Series: Stocking your drygoods pantry.
- The Kitchen Series: Stocking your fridge and freezer.
- The Kitchen Series: Stocking your spice pantry.
- The Kitchen Series: Making your own mixes
- The Kitchen Series: Making you own stock.
- The Kitchen Series: Organizing your pantry, Part 1
- The Kitchen Series: Organizing your pantry, Part 2
Posted in: In The Kitchen, The Kitchen Series on Saturday, June 21, 2008 at 8:29 PM
