Easy skillet / one-dish meals cooked at home from scratch, without too much fuss, using basic ingredients + fresh food are very important to Quarantine Caterers.
Actually, ‘without too much fuss’ is how I usually cook, anyway. I love delicately flavour nuanced gourmet meals as you might find in a classy restaurant, or at a dinner party where someone else has slaved over a complex recipe served up on a nicely set table. Once we feel confident as the quarantine eases, as it will eventually, one joy we’re anticipating is of going out to eat at a good restaurant. Many people say this but I think it will take a while for us all to feel ok with this.
For good nutrition and ease of cooking, anything involving rice has always been good value. Yesterday my good friend Heather sent a link to a FB post about a packaged food, essentially all the dry ingredients for a risotto, new packaged food that appeared on Australian grocery shelves in the early 60’s. Rice-a-Riso (still available) rapidly became popular. In the packet were rice grains with tiny little rice shaped noodles, plus a sachet of various fried flavourings and dehydrated little pieces of chicken, beef or dried tomatoes. You browned the noodles+rice then added the seasonings and some boiling water, stirring until the water was absorbed and the rice cooked. As a quick and easy side to the meat or fish, as the meal itself, and something you could easily make much larger to feed last minute mealtime visitors by the addition of other finely chopped foods.
Rice is the most widely grown and eaten grain in the world, and Australians have always eaten plenty of it. In our house Mum cooked curry which of course we had with steamed rice. In the late 50s there was a blight problem in the Tasmanian potato crop, so about two years there was a potato shortage, and prices went through the roof. During that time Mum mostly served rice instead of potatoes in our meals, and we only had potatoes when there were visitors around the table. For some reason we weren’t allowed to comment on that matter.
When I was young, a popular dessert in Australian homes (and at our grandmother’s) was rice custard. What the family eats is generally determined by whether the family cook likes it, or not. We often had boiled and baked custards, but ours rarely contained rice, so clearly Mum herself preferred custard without it. I never cared for it particularly, either, but being well brought up, never complained if rice custard was served when I was ‘out’, because as we all know, when you’re the visitor you eat whatever you’re given đ
Last year in Brasil I enjoyed a lovely rice dish for lunch in a cafe in Gramado where I was teaching at 2019 festival of patchwork and quilting, an event sadly cancelled this year for obvious reasons. I don’t remember what the recipe was actually called, but I’d call it an orange chicken risotto, for which there are several recipes on line. It was wonderful. and I recreated it at home, successfully, along these lines:
- Dice enough boned chicken breast for each person.
- Brown these pieces in olive oil on high heat, remove and set aside.
- Finely dice a medium white onion, lightly brown, remove and add to the cooked chicken pieces.
- Use the pan drippings, with a little more oil if needed, to brown about 1/2cup dry rice per person.
- To the rice add a cup of boiling water, the juice of a large orange, about 1/2 cup of white wine (optional), and 1tsp of fine orange zest: add to the rice and bring to low simmer stirring frequently. If it looks dry before the rice is properly cooked, add more juice, wine or water.
- Finally add the chicken pieces, onion and about a handful of chopped cilantro.
- You could add a green veggie or a salad; the restaurant didn’t.
- Heat, serve and enjoy đ
It’s a perfect dish for lunch on a day at home, and as I haven’t made it since last year, I’ll make sure fresh cilantro and chicken are on the next shopping list. I keep a running list of things we need on the kitchen bench, as fellow Quarantine Caterers agree, a shopping list is more important these days, helping limit visits to the food shops and reducing browsing-for-inspiration-time.