Adaptability Is The Key...In Food, Life and Surfing

Did you ever have one of those days where nothing seems to be going right, THEN you have to make dinner on top of it all?  Talk about Mercury in Retrograde! I've learned the hard way, the very hard way, to read the signs of a bad day.

Sometimes Duck and Cover can be a very handy tool.

Unless of course cooking's creative process works as a relaxant....which it does for me most of the time. Then I can go all out and produce something wonderful.  But if it starts to go south, I've learned to adapt.

Take a couple of nights ago....it had been a long day; running errands, helping a friend, coming home and trying to do the many things needing to be done.  A lot of the day went okay, at least in the outside world.  Once home, when it was time to tend to my personal things, it all went to crap.

I just missed a very important call, one I'd waited all week to receive and would have to wait 'til the following Monday to get back in touch.   Phone tag, I'm It!  The washing machine decided to have one of it's spells....heck, at that age I'd feel the same way!

The cat box, one of those automatic LitterMaid gizmos, finally died....after seven years of that sort of work, wouldn't you? 

The microwave stopped working mid-cycle, which isn't so bad but I REALLY wanted that cup of reheated coffee!  The oven-a slow one to begin with-decided to not cooperate with my plans for simple baked chicken,  and God only knows what happened to the rice!

"Okay," I said to myself in the middle of the kitchen, "this sucks.  What to do?"  The food had to be saved,
all else would follow. 

The chicken was salvageable, thanks to a nice cast iron skillet and some quick chopping.  Suddenly we were having stir fry. A couple veggies thrown in for color, flavor, texture and nutrition helped round out the dish.

The rice was another matter. It needed some TLC-read Technically Ludicrous Creativity-but I managed to get it un-sticky and un-gloopy by stir frying it too, using some release spray rather than saturating it with butter or grease. Not sure what went wrong with it in the first place, probably too much water or not enough cooking time....or maybe it needed rinsing. Rice can be tricky.

At least the food disaster was averted!  As for the other things, the microwave still needs to be replaced (another seven year old appliance-bought around the same time as the cat box), but I don't depend on it as a primary cooking source so we can wait 'til we save up the money....which may be a while.

The cat box too will need replacing....but we do have one of those "regular" ones for our kitty for the time being. (He is NOT amused).  I guess we're all making adjustments.

Today's entry isn't a recipe, so much as a method....but I wanted to illustrate one of the main points in Cooking and Life - adaptability. It's the true key to survival.  Be it making a meal, planning your next big conquest or just catching a wave on your board....be ready for anything, 'cos it's bound to happen.

Orange You Glad I Didn't Say........?

Monday, Monday.....
Life's been busy, crazy and even slightly hair-raising at times....and this is just the beginning of the week. OY!
Jack's been feeling under the weather, so we've been going to doctors and sitting in waiting rooms a lot.  OY again!  So tonight for dinner I wanted to make one of our favorite things....Orange Chicken Stir Fry with Rice.

There are several versions of this dish...some are just chicken cut in pieces, dredged in seasoned flour and/or corn starch, stir fried then re-stirred with peppers and onions in an orange sauce.  That's fine and good.  But I didn't want anything complicated.  It had to be simple, quick and tasty.

So I took some chicken thighs (conveniently defrosted), skinned, rinsed then patted them dry.  I decided to leave them whole for the first portion of their cooking.  Partially because I wanted to retain the moisture and partially because I was being just plain lazy.

Anyway, these chicken pieces went into a bowl containing orange juice and bits of cut up garlic, ginger and onion (finely chopped-and you don't need a lot and could probably substitute dried spices for chopped from fresh).  I set it aside to marinate while preparing everything else.

The rice was easy enough...for review- one cup of rice, 1 tablespoon of butter or margarine, two cups of water. Butter cook the rice in the pan a few moments before adding the water, then bring it all to a boil before covering it for 20 minutes.   NO PEEKING!  After 20 minutes, remove it from the heat but don't remove the lid for an additional 5 minutes.  When you do, the rice will be perfect.

After assembling all the tools, spices and so on, it was time for some serious chopping!  I believe there's a natural order to things....be it cooking or rocket science (by the way, the two are NOT mutually exclusive, leastways not to my way of thinking!).  In cooking, I make sure the things that are going to take longest to cook get started first.

I cut up the broccoli and carrots first, cut sugar peas into small bits, then red bell peppers, onions, garlic, a bit of bok choy and some oranges so that everything would be ready to grab.
 

Veggies in the wok

The wok had been dry heating (no oil in it)  for a little while over a low flame.  Once everything was ready, I turned up said flame to maximum and put about 2 teaspoons of oil into it, swirling the pan carefully to spread it around.  To that I added the broccoli and carrots, stirring and stirring all the while.

Some folks like to pre-steam their "hard" veggies before wokking them.  I used to do that, too. But in I've found cooking them in the wok retains their nutritional value, flavor, texture and color. After cooking the broccoli and carrots for about 3 to 5 minutes, I added the cut sugar peas, peppers, cut up white portions of bok choy(the leaves will come later and are optional),  a bit of the garlic ginger and some onion.

That was all stir fried for another few minutes,then I tested a piece of broccoli and carrot. 
NOTE: They should still have a bit of a crunch to them

Chicken cooking in wok

I poured all this into a metal bowl and set it aside....it was time to address the chicken thighs, which had been soaking a good 30 to 40 minutes by now.  After bringing the wok back up to heat and giving it a light sheen of oil, I added the whole pieces "skin side" down.  I spooned a bit of the marination into the wok too, and let the whole thing cook for five minutes on side one and five minutes on side two.  Then I set them aside to rest.

The marination liquid was still usable.  Two tablespoons of cornstarch, a splash of balsamic vinegar (just a splash) and a teaspoon of light brown sugar turned it into a good sauce.


I got a small skillet and zapped it with some release spray (like Pam, etc.) then added the sliced oranges and stir fried them 'til they began to brown.

Oranges cooking in skillet

After cutting up the chicken, I added the oranges and the chicken to the wok and stir fried all of that, with a little of the sauce mixture.   When it started to thicken, I added the remaining veggies and stirred the whole thing around until it was well blended.  I added more of the sauce mixture, a little at a time, until the consistency was just right.  Then I adjusted the seasonings, put it over rice and served it to Jack, who was very happy.

Orange Chicken Stir Fry

There are lots of different things you can do with this base recipe.  If I were serving it to myself, I'd add some little hot red chili peppers....but that's me.  I eat fire.

So that's how I get out of the Monday blues....a little kitchen creativity.

Rice Without Intimidation

Rice

Rice used to intimidate the heck out of me!  It seemed no matter what I did, the stuff would always come out more like lumpy wall paper paste than anything even remotely edible.

Let's face it, at 7,000 years of age, rice had a lot of life experience compared to me.  How could I tame such a worldly thing?

Mom used to make Uncle Ben's a lot, but I had a feeling there was more...much more going on!
"There are just so many varieties of  the stuff!" I'd quip while looking over the bins, bags and boxes at the local organic food store.

Long, short and medium grain....and prepared in different forms; regular milled or polished, brown unpolished and parboiled or converted, pre-cooked (also known as "minute rice").  Some rices are sweet and high in gluten, others are hard-shelled and nutty like Louisiana Pecan Rice.  There are foreign varieties like Italian Arborio that require constant attention....including 18 minutes of constant stirring.  So many types, so many ways to cook it!  Enough to make my head spin!

I opted for plain old American milled long grain.  At least we spoke the same language!  Sometimes the magic worked and sometimes it didn't.

I started to get the hang of it with a microwave rice cooker found at a local dollar store.  It worked, so as long as I had that cooker and a functioning microwave, our rice was fine.

Then one day it happened.  The cooker's inner lid got cracked, and it ceased to function.  I was panic-stricken! We were having company that night, and rice was supposed to be part of the meal.  Our guest didn't like potatoes, hated pasta and didn't want yams....but they loved rice.  Oy!   And apparently Jack had bragged to him about my culinary abilities.

 I looked around the kitchen.  There were tons of cook books, so I grabbed a few and read.  Everybody had an opinion on every kind of rice....from Fannie Farmer to Joy of Cooking and everything in between.  I narrowed the search down to plain old long grain white rice. That narrowed the field considerably, although each had their own interpretation of that, too. But they all had a couple of things in common.

1) Measurements are usually the same - 2 parts water to 1 part rice
2) Rice should be cooked for 20 minutes
3) It should be covered that entire time
4) It should rest for about 10 minutes before removing lid
5) It should be fork fluffed before serving
6) It should not resemble lumpy wall paper paste

Some of them called for the rice to be rinsed.  Some suggested heating the rice a few minutes in butter, stirring constantly, before adding the water.  Some just suggested stirring the rice into water that's at a full boil, then lowering the flame immediately to the simmering point and covering it.

This last choice is the one I made then, and the one I still use most often. 
So that's the one I'll talk about today.

WHITE LONG GRAIN RICE

1 part rice
2 parts water
1 tsp. salt, optional

Set the water with the salt on the stove to boil - this takes less time if the pan is covered.  Once it's boiling, lower the heat to simmer and stir the rice into the water. Let it come back up to boiling then cover it with a tight fitting lid.   Cook covered for 20 minutes.

Do not....Repeat - DO NOT uncover.  Let the rice do it's work!
After 20 minutes remove the pan from the heat and DO NOT uncover it yet!  Let it sit for 10 minutes.
After that, uncover the rice and fluff it with a fork. Then it's ready to enjoy!

Fork fluffed and ready to eat

This recipe isn't right for every type of rice...some take more time, some need stirring....so the best thing I can suggest is to read and learn. I'll make some of the other varieties as we go along. The thing to remember about rice, what ever variety,  is that it is primarily a cereal.  So if you come to it with that attitude you have a  better chance of mastering its preparation.