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| Dumplings with baked paprika. I-B:Dough,D:Soft Cheese. P-Wrap. M-Boil,15'. P-Remove. I-V:Paprika. P-Add. |
There's been an explosion of cooking activities in the media in the last years. Culinary gurus from various backgrounds are emerging from every nook and cranny and fascinate us with their unique masterpieces. Cooking product resembles more a work of art then edible food, requires mind-blowing number of pots, pans and procedures to create it and almost a novel to explain how to do it.
There is a permanent oscillation between specification and generalization in human history, and while it might be nice to have a recipe for reindeer's spleen sautee from North Tungusia with all its details, I suspect that cooking is not a rocket science and can be reduced to few basic tasks.
After all, no matter how artistic your food looks on the plate, it will blend already in your mouth, will hit your stomach as a paste, and there will be no difference whether it was cooked in a Michelin 3-star restaurant or it came from a tube which they use on a space station.
My minimalist cooking follows few basic principles: (a) food should be prepared in only one dish (possibly temporarily removing (P-Remove) or adding (P-Add) some ingredients between the cooking dish and the serving plate); (b) recipes include ingredients (I-), procedures (P-) and heat media (M-) which are organized into few basic groups; (c) recipes could be generalized so that some or all of the ingredients may be replaced with some other; (d) recipes are written in a short, symbolized form in a line or two and should be read at a glance.
This approach should be clear from the following one-page cue-sheet. It starts with a table that explains the formulation of ingredients, procedures, heat treatment and tasks (tasks are applied sequently, but optionally skipping or repeating some of them; brackets ([]) indicate an optional part). The cue-sheet includes 19 general and 14 specific recipes in a form of colored tasks. In this generalized form it can be used as a quick reference or as an incentive to invent new recipes by (randomly) choosing different ingredients and tasks.
However, I realized that this might be too cryptic for many of you and a sample explanation is needed. So, how the first general recipe for Steak + vegs:
"I-A,P-Whol,M-Cont. P-Rem. I-V,M-Oil. P-Add. I-C"
translates into ordinary language? It means: I-A: take an ingredient from Animal group (a steak); P-Whol: dont' cut it; M-Cont: put it in the cooking pot on heated surface (without any oil) and fry it; P-Rem: remove it to from a cooking pot to a plate; I-V,M-Oil: cut and put vegetables in a cooking pot and fry them on oil; P-Add: add a steak from the plate to the cooking pot; I-C: add condiments to the pot.
Happy minimalist cooking!
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| Pots and plates: 1-iron pot for induction. 2-aluminium wok for gas. 3-stainless steel pot for gas, for bigger quantities of food. 4-dish for electrical oven. 5-plate for microwave oven, for eating and as a temporary depository during cooking. |
And some pictures of my minimalist cooking products.
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| Dumplings with baked paprika (cooked in wok). I-B:Dough,D:Soft Cheese. P-Wrap. M-Boil,15'. P-Remove. I-V:Paprika. P-Add. |
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| Eggs with mushrooms (cooked in wok, on gas) I-V:Onio,Mushr, M-Oil. P-Remov. I-A:Egg, M-Oil. P-Add. I-C:Coriander. |
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| Stuffed paprika (cooked in pot no.3, on gas); I-A:Mince,V:Oni,B;Rice, M-Oil,10'. I-V:Paprika, P-Fill. I-S;TomPas,Oil,Wat,C;SP. M-Steam,35'. I-C:Coriander. |
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| Baked Sea Bream with vegetables (cooked in pot no.4, in oven); I-A:SeaBream, P-Whole, I-V:Paprika,Tomat,Garlic,C:Oil,LemonJuic. M-Air,200C,12', I-V:Lemon. |
