TV cooking segments really appeal to me because everything is so quick. One moment Fast Freddy is chopping up a few onions and vegetables. Then in a flash he’s adding some secret sauce only available in a particular Balinese village. The next moment the complete culinary creation is revealed for us to devour with our TV eyes. Bali Belly Jelly with Phat noodles. Fast Freddy knows all the shortcuts it seems. How else can he prepare and cook a meal for four people and wash up the dishes and clean the kitchen bench in about three and a half minutes?
Inspired by Fast Freddy and his kitchen productivity I have been experimenting with gourmet speed cooking. I call it Speed Cuisine.
Here are some of my best recipes.
Chicken and Spinach Whirlwind Curry.
I have found that a huge amount of time can be saved by using pre-cooked ingredients. At the moment our rival supermarkets are having a roast chicken price war. Roast chickens are flying out the door of the supermarkets at paltry prices. In a happy culinary coincidence, my local Asian grocery store has jars of “Run Run” curry sauce for sale for just $1. The jars of curry have no use-by date or best-by dates so they obviously last forever.
Here’s how to cook my almost instant gourmet curry. Carefully hack up the BBQ chicken with an electric carving knife (a great time saver), toss the meat into a bowl with the curry sauce, give it a quick stir, pour it over instant noodles and nuke the lot in the microwave. Garnish it with pre-wilted spinach straight from the bottom drawer of the refrigerator. There you have it. Chicken and Spinach Whirlwind curry. Total preparation time, about three and a half minutes, just like Fast Freddy. Top tip: it pays to wash the spinach, unless you prefer curry with an earthy gritty texture.
Versatile Vegetarian Miracle Soup.
A great variety of vegetables are available these days, all as fresh as the day the cans were put on the supermarket shelves. They are pre-cooked and pre-chopped which is perfect for Speed Cuisine. Buy a can of peas (the soft ones with that unique grey-green colour), a can of corn, a can of tomatoes and a can of baked beans. Mixed them all together in a saucepan (not forgetting to open the cans). Add a jug of water and a stock cube or two and bring to the boil. As all the vegetables are pre-cooked they only need heating (or, if you’re in a real hurry, don’t bother).
For real French flair, sprinkle with croutons made by chopping up an old piece of toast.
If you fancy Italian fascination, forget the croutons and add a packet of pre-cooked penne pasta and top with some freshly grated parmesan cheese. Only buy the parmesan cheese in containers that say “freshly grated”. There you have it, hasty tasty minestrone, more or less. Nutritious and delicious. Strangely, my Italian friends don’t seem to go for it. Maybe it’s the baked beans which I think come from Britain not Italy.
Twice cooked fries.
By the time I bring my fries home from the fish and chip shop they are usually cold. So I like to reheat them and spice them up a bit. This is a popular cooking technique these days. Fast Freddy is always banging on about twice cooked pork etc. This is just another name for heating up leftovers but he makes it sound more fancy. With fries, do NOT try to reheat them in the microwave. Trust me, this never works. You will just end up with a droopy greasy mess. There’s nothing worse than fries with no backbone.
Carefully place the fries in an oven dish, add salt and grill them for 3 minutes on high.
For Chinese chips first sprinkle them with ginger powder and MSG before grilling.
For Tex Mex fries, sprinkle with chilli flakes and serve in a large taco shell with refried beans fresh from the can.
For authentic Australian parma chips, top with tomato sauce, ham slices and packaged cheese slices before grilling. Don’t forget to take the plastic wrapping off the cheese and make sure the ham is not going grey on the edges.
For exotic dessert fries, slice some liqueur chocolates over the fries, grill and serve with a squirt or two from an aerosol can of that instant whipped cream. Food in aerosol cans has been great for speed cuisine.
Super-speed Desserts
One recipe I heard about recently used Christmas dessert leftovers to create a high speed, no waste gourmet dessert. Simply crush the leftover Christmas shortbread in a bowl with a bit of butter and press this marvellous mixture into an oven tray to form a base. Then take the leftover Christmas pudding and custard, mix it with large amounts of ice cream and cover the shortbread base with it. Decorate the top with red and green sugar sprinkles and perhaps a bit of tinsel left over from Christmas Day. Pop the reworked Christmas dessert into the freezer until solid and then cut it up and serve with some more of that instant spray on cream. Delicious. You can keep it in the freezer for months to relive Christmas in August if you like. A few warnings: don’t forget to put this dish in the freezer not the oven. And never be tempted to nibble the tinsel no matter how hungry you are. It will get stuck in your teeth and give you one of those weird glinting TV comedy smiles.
Speed Cuisine – gourmet grub in a flash.
-Geoff Milton
