Smart Cooking for Busy People: How to Make Healthy and Tasty Full Meals in 30 Minutes (Cookbooks for Busy People Book 1) by Alexandra Beck

Author:Alexandra Beck [Beck, Alexandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-11-19T23:00:00+00:00

Exercise 11

Improvising a 30-minute meal

The last exercise in this program is improvisation. You are going to conceive, plan and prepare a two-course meal. Try to do the conception and planning in 15 minutes maximum and the cooking, in 30.

Directions:

1. Take a look in your fridge and your pantry and make a mental note of what you have and what you’d like to cook with right now.

2. Using your own knowledge and what you’ve learnt in this book, decide on your menu.

3. If your mind has gone blank in regard to the appetizer or the main dish, or both, Google ‘easy <name of ingredient or ingredients> recipe’. For the side dish, pick one of the options you’ve tried in earlier exercises.

4. Browse several recipes, bearing in mind that you want to cook a healthy and fast meal. This means that if the recipe says to boil your veggies, you’ll want to steam or sauté them instead. You’ll also want to cut your foods into smaller pieces and reduce their cooking time whenever possible (the mandoline slicer will come handy at this point). Finally, choose a main dish recipe that leaves you sufficient handsfree time to prepare your appetizer or dessert (recipes involving steaming, baking or grilling are good choices). If, on the contrary, the main dish you set your sights on involves non-stop attention and activity – such as chopping and stirring – and takes more than 20 minutes to prepare, bookmark it for another time and choose something else for now.

5. Once your choices are made, visualize the process, decide where to start and begin to cook.

Don’t be disheartened if this exercise takes you more than 45 minutes – after all, you haven’t had an awful lot of practice with this type of cooking yet. As everyone knows, success is 1% talent and 99% practice. All you need is some more practice.

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