Читать книгу Master it: How to cook today - Rory O'Connell - Страница 11

Getting started – get organised

Being organised is a great help in the kitchen. Once you have decided what you are going to cook and have completed your shopping, you are ready to start cooking.

Sit down for a moment before you start and write out a work list, ‘an order of work’. Read through the recipes and decide how you will divide up your time, what needs to happen first and so on. This will mean you are organising your cooking in the correct order. The dishes that take longest to cook or that need to rest and chill, such as pastry, need to go on first and so on. When you do this, nothing is forgotten and it helps you to make the best use of your time. You then have the added pleasure of ticking things off your list as you go, a simple pleasure that I enjoy greatly.

Having written out your order of work, I suggest that you measure out all your ingredients before you start to do any cooking. Keep plastic containers and the like for this purpose. Keep the measured ingredients for each recipe on a separate tray, or, if you want to be pedantic like me, line them up in a row in the order they go into the dish. I find this time-saving and satisfying, and I can then focus on the dish rather than juggling with cooking and measuring at the same time.

Multiple ingredients that go into a dish at the same time can be combined in one bowl or on a plate, thereby leaving less clutter on your work surface. I get a considerable amount more done when I measure ahead like this. The clearer my workspace is, the clearer my brain seems to be and the more I enjoy the cooking process.

Try to wash up as you go. You don’t want a mountain of washing-up facing you when you have finished cooking.

I keep my salt and sugar in little open-faced bowls beside the hob, along with the pepper mill, so that they are immediately available when I need them.

I like to keep a little butter at room temperature in a butter dish, so that if I am grilling or pan-frying it is soft and easily spreadable – this means I can smear the ingredient with the minimum amount of fat, but still enough to add flavour and prevent the ingredient from sticking.

Store cupboard

Have a small store cupboard of essential and regularly used ingredients to make the shopping for a particular meal less onerous, and to have the key ingredients for the making of a meal at short notice. See the suggested list below, and tailor it to suit your likes and needs. Shop for quality rather than quantity for the store cupboard. This is not a war chest to see you through a crisis, but a regularly used source of flavoursome ingredients that will add the oomph to the more easily found staples.

Maldon sea salt

Olive oil

Sunflower oil

White and red wine vinegar

French mustard

Anchovies, salted or in oil

Capers

Dried chillies

Lentils

Chickpeas

Local honey

Chocolate, best quality, 62% and 70% cocoa solids

Dried fruit: prunes, raisins, sultanas and cherries

A pot of raspberry jam

Flour: plain, self-raising, strong white

Small quantities of regularly used whole spices, such as cumin, coriander, cardamom, nutmeg

Ground turmeric

Basmati rice

Risotto rice

Couscous

Olives

Chicken stock (in freezer)

Fish sauce (nam pla)

Parmesan and Cheddar cheese (in the fridge)

Chorizo

The freezer

I find the freezer very useful for preserving certain foods, cutting down on waste and generally as an organisational aid. However, the bigger your freezer is, the more likely you are to have it packed with food that you may not get to use quickly enough. The most important thing to remember when freezing foods is that the sooner you use the food, the better it will taste.

Only freeze food that is in perfect condition.

Freeze foods in suitable containers such as freezer bags. Recycled food containers such as those used for yoghurt or milk can be perfect, providing you have remembered to save the lids.

Freeze foods in small quantities, so that you will not have to defrost more than you need.

Put a clear label listing the food and the date of freezing on each item.

Be careful when defrosting certain raw foods such as chicken and pork to ensure that the food is completely defrosted before cooking. I usually remove chicken and pork from the freezer the evening before use, sit them in the fridge overnight and finish defrosting them at room temperature the next day.

I buy fruit during the local growing season to ensure best quality and value, and freeze it in tightly sealed bags or punnets. Raspberries, loganberries, tayberries and blackberries, black, white and redcurrants freeze well. Cranberries and blueberries are also worth the effort. Bitter Seville oranges for marmalade freeze surprisingly well and after defrosting the rind softens easily during the cooking. This means you don’t have to make all your marmalade for the year during the oranges’ short winter season.

Basil is the only herb I freeze. I freeze a little basil in August to use straight from the freezer later in the year, but only in sauces. The trick with basil is not to remove the container it has been frozen in from the freezer when you are retrieving some for a sauce. If the container is removed from the freezer, the basil defrosts and oxidizes instantly and when refrozen will be bitter, disappointing and a pointless exercise. When carefully handled as suggested, this frozen basil is surprisingly good and is perfect for perking up a winter tomato sauce of tinned, bottled or frozen tomatoes. The basil needs no preparation before freezing. Just make sure the leaves are fresh and unblemished.

Tomatoes are the only vegetable I freeze. Like basil, tomatoes need no preparation before freezing. They should be as ripe as possible, and will when defrosted be suitable only for cooked sauces, soups and purées. Freeze them when at their best and in season. If you have frozen the basil as well as the tomatoes, it is possible to make an excellent preserved tomato sauce during the winter months. This is a prime example of how to use your freezer to maximum effect. You have trapped the summer’s flavours for releasing during the winter. If you achieve this, bravo you.

Firm-textured fish such as salmon, turbot, brill and monkfish freeze well, but only when impeccably fresh. Before freezing, wash the fish well and make sure no trace of blood remains on the flesh or near the bones.

All poultry freezes well, either on the bone or jointed. I occasionally freeze cooked chicken bones to use for stock. That is the only case in which I freeze cooked meat. Poultry should be perfectly fresh and lightly dried with kitchen paper before freezing.

I rarely freeze meat, but if I have to save an ingredient, such as a steak or a few lamb chops, I will wrap it carefully and try to use it as soon as possible after freezing. Minced meat is really not worth freezing and will be dull and watery when defrosted.

Most soups freeze well. I don’t freeze green soups, though, as they lose their colour and delicate flavour. Freeze soups in small tightly sealed containers.

When puff or shortcrust pastry is frozen on the day it is made, it is quite successful. These are the only pastries that I feel are worth freezing. Freeze the pastry, well wrapped, in blocks close to the weight you use for your specific recipes.

I freeze white sourdough bread while still fresh to save it being wasted and then use the defrosted bread for breadcrumbs and pangrattata. The bread can of course be crumbed before freezing. Soda breads do not freeze successfully.

Clearly, freezing is an essential part of the process of making and serving ice creams, sorbets and granitas. Sorbets and granitas need to be used as soon as possible after freezing, ideally within a couple of days, as they become more icy over time and lose flavour quite quickly. Ice creams are more robust, but they too will be better the sooner they are eaten.

All meat, poultry and fish stocks freeze well, as do meat juices left from a roast.

I occasionally freeze nuts if I have overbought. They lose some of their texture as a result of freezing, but the flavour is preserved and they will not go rancid, which is what will happen to them if you store them for too long at room temperature. They are perfectly acceptable for using in pesto, pralines and cakes. Pine nuts, hazelnuts and Brazil nuts are the ones I freeze. I generally buy walnuts in the shell, so the necessity to freeze them does not arise; however, shelled walnuts can be frozen.

Egg whites freeze perfectly and will be wonderful for meringues and soufflés when defrosted. They defrost in an hour. Organised cooks will freeze the whites in ice-cube trays and pop them out individually as needed. Otherwise, drop the defrosted whites on to a scale, allowing 25g per individual white.