Get Cooking_ 150 Simple Recipes to Get You Started in the Kitchen - Mollie Katzen [81]
BUYING AND STORING
When buying potatoes, make sure they have no soft or rotten spots. Look for smooth skin and absolutely no sprouts.
Wait to wash or scrub potatoes until just before cooking them. Store them in a cool, dark, dry place, ideally one with ventilation. The temperature should be about 45°F to 50°F. Don’t keep potatoes in the refrigerator, which can turn their starch to sugar and make them sweet.
Although onions and garlic should be stored in the same conditions, you should separate them from your potatoes as much as possible because they produce gases that cause potatoes to rot when stored in close quarters with them.
You can store potatoes for up to 2 months for the heartier varieties, such as russets, and 1 month for small “new” potatoes, such as red creamers, or heirlooms, such as fingerlings. Check in on your stored potatoes every few days, and get rid of any that have softened, shriveled, or sprouted. These conditions are contagious (to other potatoes, not to you).
Vegetable Sides—Front and Center
At my house, vegetables are the stars, and I like to keep their preparation very simple. You’ll notice a common theme here: olive oil, garlic or onion or shallot, salt and pepper. It’s a light touch in which the vegetables themselves are the variety. Once you discover how accessible this approach is, your “sides” might just become the “center” from time to time. Note that you can expand any of the vegetable sides in this chapter into light vegetarian main dishes, just by serving them over brown rice, couscous, or bulgur (following pages)—or a combination of grains—and topping it all off with toasted nuts, cheese, or a sauce. This is what I call eating a little lower on the food chain, and for so many reasons—from economy and sustainability to health and weight management—it’s really the way to go.
how to cook rice
Rice seems like the simplest thing in the world to cook. You just simmer it in the right amount of boiling water until tender, right? Well, yes. At least, theoretically. Problem is, differences in stoves, pots, and individual types of rice make for uneven results. So if you have tried to cook rice (any kind—white or brown, long-or short-grain) according to the package directions and have ended up with either half-raw grains (and possibly a scorched pan) or globs of overcooked mush, I have a plan for you.
But before I get to my plan, you should know that one fine route to reliable rice would be a good electric rice cooker. Full disclosure: I have never used one, but my friends who cook their rice this way swear by their machines. Also, many or most Asian restaurants use rice cookers, with consistently perfect results. So clearly this is one way to go. It takes up space in your kitchen, but it might be worth it if you are a rice lover and want to upgrade to also being a rice achiever.
Now, moving on to my plan (which is kind of unorthodox, but it works). Namely, you boil rice, as you would pasta, in an unmeasured large quantity of water until it is mostly cooked. Then you drain the rice, transfer it to a shallow pan, cover it tightly, and bake it until done. This takes about the same amount of time as the old-fashioned stovetop method, but more reliably produces perfectly separate, fluffy, tender grains. The bonus benefits: (1) You are spared having to worry about proportions of rice to water, and (2) after the rice is done, you can leave it right where it is and reheat as necessary in the same pan.
These instructions will work for any kind of rice: white or brown, long-grain or short-. (You didn’t ask, but just so you know: my own favorite kind of rice, which I use for just about everything, is brown basmati, which is a fragrant, delicious long-grain rice that will make your kitchen smell incredible. I strongly recommend that brown basmati become your default grain.)
You can make a medium batch (yielding 6 cups cooked rice, or 4 to 6 servings) or a large one (yielding 9 cups cooked rice, or 6 to 9 servings). Use 2 cups uncooked rice for the medium yield, and 3 cups uncooked