Easy Meal

Hey,

So, I've discovered a meal that can be made if you have loads of work to do. You could be cleaning up the house, or working on mini dissertation-like thing (like I've been doing) or whatever keeps you busy or stressed out and still be able to cook and eat something really good when you have the time to finally get some food into your system.

Ingredients
ASDA Mediterranean Vegetables with Cherry Tomatoes (should be available at walk mart)
3/4 of an onion
2-3 garlic cloves
Salt
Hot, ground peppers
Black pepper
Paprika
Sunflower/Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Rice
Water


Method

• Preheat your oven to about 200C.
• In an oven tray with relatively high sides, drizzle a bit of oil then pour in the contents a frozen bag of ASDA Mediterranean Vegetables with Cherry Tomatoes.
• Dice the onion or cut it up irregularly, cut each garlic clove into tiny pieces and pour both into the tray.
• Next,  season the contents of the tray with salt, a sprinkle of black pepper and paprika and some hot, ground pepper.
• Drizzle some more oil over everything, turn and stir them to ensure the spices are near-evenly spread.
• Add a bit of water to the tray and then place it in your over for an hour, but it's best to put it in for a half hour, stir it then put it in for another half hour.
• Wash or rinse some rice until the water runs clear then pour it into a rice cooker with an ample amount of water.
• Season....the water....with some salt, put the lid down on the cooker and turn it on.
• After an hour of what's in the oven being there, if you're not ready to eat yet, just turn off the oven leaving the tray in there.
• When the rice is done cooking, leave the rice cooker on warm if you're not ready to eat.
• When you are eventually ready to eat, get a nice bowl, plate or dish, pour some rice into it and then place the contents of the tray over the rice. You can mix it up while you're eating.

Bon appétit! :)

DIY: Vegetable Stock

I never cook with a different stock. You know the reason.

Okay! so, I use vegetable stock to make various dishes like spicy rice, sauces, et cetera. How do I make my vegetable stock?

Basically, I throw vegetables I find around into a pot with water and boil them for about an hour. My stable vegetables for this are onions, ginger and tomatoes. The last time I made vegetable stock, I noticed I had run out of a lot of vegetables so I went in search in the fridge, freezer, pantry till I finally found some stuff. I threw in two tomatoes, about a whole medium-sized onion, sweet corn (found it in the freezer and it didn't look like anyone wanted it), frozen peas, ginger, I think I added a bit of a green bell pepper too, thyme, Italian Seasoning (herbs), salt, bay leaves and two red, "hot" peppers. Like I said above, I boiled them for about an hour then I poured the contents of the pot into a sieve and stored the liquid (stock) in a bowl. I actually used all the stock when I was cooking then, but if I don't use it all, I save it in a bowl and put it into the freezer.

You can easily make vegetable stock by storing random things from vegetables in a bowl. For example, if you get a liquid out of a tomato (say it was frozen and you defrosted it), you can put it in the bowl and use the tomatoes for what you brought them out for. If you don't use all of a carrot or you have a bit of the carrot left on the....I'll call it stub.....you can toss it in the bowl, if you have spinach you use all, but a little bit of an onion, toss the rest in the bowl, if you open a tin of sweetcorn or a bag of peas and you don't use it all, you can toss the rest into the bowl or just pour a bit into the bowl and keep the bowl in the freezer. When you're ready to make some stock, pour the contents of your bowl into a pot, add water to it and boil them for about an hour! Simple!

Even with the above, I believe the perfect vegetable stock should be made with onions, tomatoes, ginger, carrots, mushrooms, cabbage and some herbs (and maybe a bit of a green vegetable too).

As usual, just toss 'em in a pot, pour in some water, turn on the heat, put a lid on the pot, let the water boil with the vegetables for about an hour.

Stocks are best used fresh, but if you don't use it all, remember, store it in a clean bowl in the freezer.

*When defrosting your stock, pour a bit of water over it in the pot your defrosting it in so it doesn't evaporate, or leave sticky burns at the bottom of your pot as it melts.