So I left my lunch at home today like a fucking idiot. Go figure. On the bright side, that meant I would still have lunch for tomorrow, so I could just make a quick, small dinner, which was an even better idea since I ended up leaving work a bit late and had to stop on the way for dog food. So I get to the house, take care of chores, and finally get to start cooking dinner. I broke down a chicken yesterday, so I thought I'd just use the neck to make a quick broth for some veggie soup, maybe throw in a little rice. Quick and simple, right?
So first things first, I cooked the chicken a little bit in some extra virgin olive oil with some kosher salt and black pepper. Didn't completely brown it, but got enough done.
After that, I just had to add water, bring it to a boil, and focus on everything else.
So for my veggie soup, I chopped up some zucchini, radish, kale, mushroom, and red bell pepper. After I had finished that, I realized I had done way too much zucchini, and that I also didn't want to cook the zucchini in the soup because I didn't think I'd be crazy about the texture, so I set it aside. Then I got to thinking about the kale, and how I'd rather have that be a crispy topping than drowning in broth, so I also set it aside. This is why we plan before we start. Or maybe it's why we don't.
I decided to add a light coating of corn starch seasoned with salt and black pepper on the zucchini and fry it up in butter. Butter makes everything better, amen? Amen.
The good thing about frying up a veggie that can be eaten raw (i.e. zucchini) is that you don't have to worry about cooking all the way through; instead, you can turn the heat up some and focus on getting that nice brown crust on there. Mission accomplished.
After the zucchini was done, I set it on a paper towel, then dumped my diced radish straight into the melted butter and stuck-on bits of seasoned breading. I didn't want to fully cook the radish since it was going to boil; I just wanted to get it a little soft first.
After the radish, I did the same thing with the mushroom and bell pepper, adding a little salt and pepper, then dumped everything in the pan into the same bowl with the radish.
I added some olive oil to my mostly cleanish pan and dumped in the kale with a dash of kosher salt and a lot of black pepper.
Meanwhile, once the broth was tasting pretty good, I dumped my veggies in and reduced it to a simmer with the lid on. After a few minutes, I decided to add some rice, which I didn't measure and added too much because I'm me. That's also when I noticed the bag of dried split peas in the pantry and decided to rinse and add a handful of them, too. I thought that might be fucking fancy, I don't know. I was bored watching water boil. Idle hands are the devil's playthings or some bullshit, I don't know.
I also noticed that I still had half a sweet potato in the pantry, so I chopped it up and started boiling it in a second pot.
After the potato chunks were finished, I drained them, mashed them with butter, black pepper, and a little cream, and ODG saw that it was good.
So holy shit. Quick dinner my ass. I used a my ice cream soup to dump my mashed sweet potato into the middle of my bowl. Easy peasy, right? Here's where it stays simple as fuck *and* looks like I know what I'm doing.
I ladled some soup onto one side of the mashed potato. All the solid shit (see all that fucking rice? I really need to measure this shit) stayed piled on that side while the broth surrounded the potato and looked both artsy and fartsy. All I had to do then was stick some of the fried zucchini onto the potato and crumble some of the crispy kale into the broth moat. I could definitely do better with the zucchini placement on the potato, but aside from that, I was pretty happy with how everything turned out. I mean, look at the nice colors with orange potato, red pepper, and green pea. 8.5/10, will definitely try again. Two starches? Who gives a shit?
Also, for y'all vegetarian and vegan folks: swap out the butter for the frying, the butter and cream for the potato mashing, and make a veggie broth instead of chicken broth, and BOOM goes the fuckin dynamite. You've got yourself a hearty, tasty meal.
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