Cook Smarter Not Harder

I am a cooker. I love food--read about it, look at pix, write about it, watch Food Network shows, and create it. My Dear Husband (DH) says he’s always impressed with how fast I can put a meal on the table. Can I share some of my tips and recipes with you?

I write a monthly food column for The Pinewood News in Munds Park, AZ. I am going  to share here some of what I have been writing about for the paper. I call my column, “The Quick Cook”, because I focus on how to spend as little time as possible putting food on the table while making it LOOK as if you spent a lot of time. “Smoke and Mirrors” might have been a better column title, eh?

Alli, in Mission Impastable, is for sure a Quick Cook. If you’ve read the mystery (with recipes) you know what I mean. She doesn’t like to work hard, either

Quick Cook Tip #1

Always keep some basic mixes in the fridge for quick cooking.

Two mixes are always in my fridge, ready to use and to take an ordinary meal to beyond itself. Trust me. Anything made with either will make people think you worked harder than you did.

Savory Butter

1 cup butter

½ bell pepper, diced (one color, or a mix--red and green is nice for Christmas)

2 green onions, diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

Pulse the butter, peppers, onion, and garlic in a mini food processor until finely

chopped. After use, cover and refrigerate.

Using Savory Butter:

Use as a spread on grilled bread.

Spread over the gills of a Portobello mushroom and grill. Make a sandwich or cut into pieces for an appetizer.

Put a tablespoon on your cooked pork or steak before serving.

Savory Butter can also be used to sauté veggies or mushrooms to be a side dish or appetizer. Encourage folks to put a schmear on crackers.

Cream Cheese Spread

8 ounces cream cheese (low fat okay)

3 tablespoons prepared horseradish (not creamy)

Soften cream cheese at room temperature. Vigorously stir in horseradish. After use, cover and refrigerate.

Using Cream Cheese Spread:

Make wraps by spreading Cream Cheese Spread on a flour tortilla. Layer on baby spinach and thinly sliced meat. Place a string cheese stick on an edge and roll. Wrap tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Eat like a wrap sandwich or slice for appetizers.

Cut slivers of veggies and fruits to dip into Cream Cheese Spread. This will surprise people! The sweeter the fruit, the more contrast there is.

Mix with cooked, hot hamburger and serve with crackers for an appetizer.

Mix with mushrooms and sauté in a skillet for a side to meat or as an appetizer.

I hope you enjoy these little spreads that I keep on hand. With them I can make fast appetizers when folks drop by, whip up a dinner side, or perk up the meat.

A Month-of-Appetizers: Tortilla Pinwheels

We discovered a couple of years ago that you can buy fresh tortillas, ready to fry up (in order to cook them; they’re raw), in the refrigerated section of our grocery. Ours are near the eggs, but ask if you can’t find them.

Like with anything else, cooking up your tortillas fresh is a bunch better than the ones filled with preservatives sitting on the grocery shelf for weeks. Sure, I use them, the already prepared tortillas, too, for convenience and fast meals.

But whenever I can, I fry tortillas up fresh in less than a minute. Truly!

When DH goes off hiking, I sometimes send this along. He wants something satisfying, but not too heavy. Perfect for a trail or trailer snack!

Tortilla Pinwheels (serves 2)

1 flour tortilla

1 tablespoon Cream Cheese Spread (recipe below), plus a dab more for sealing

4 ultra-thin slices of roast beef (lunchmeat or deli section)

handful of baby spinach

1 cheese stick

Spread the cream cheese spread on the tortilla, reserving the dab for the end.

Cover the tortilla with roast beef slices as much as possible. Overlap if you must or tear to fill in bare spots on the tortilla.

Layer on spinach in the same fashion as the roast beef. Lay the cheese stick near one edge of the tortilla but make sure it is shorter than the tortilla in that place.

Roll-up tightly, tucking in spinach and meat where needed. When done rolling, put a dab of cream cheese spread along the folded edge and press together to seal. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate one hour.

Remove plastic wrap and, at an angle, slice the rolled tortilla in half and then in half again. Put the four roll-ups on a small plate and serve.

Cream Cheese Spread

8 ounces cream cheese (low fat okay)

3 tablespoons prepared horseradish (not creamy)

Soften cream cheese at room temperature. Vigorously stir in horseradish. After use, cover and refrigerate.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up! DH loves these. They are easy to pick up, flavorful with a wide-range of tastes in each bite, and they are pretty, too.

Catch-Up and a New Project

I am excited about a new venture. I am doing a monthly food column for a small community paper in Northern Arizona. The Quick Cook will provide tips and recipes assembled easily to make meals appear effortless.

The Pinewood News already runs one monthly cooking column, The Creative Kitchen, but that columnist cut back the number she wrote. This way every issue of the paper (twice a month in the warm times; once a month in winter) will provide the readers with recipes and cooking ideas.

I needed something new to do, right? And, the column will provide me with a new and different reader base for my culinary mysteries. It’s all marketing, isn’t it?

Too cynical? Nah! I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t love cooking and writing about cooking. First column, for November, is done and ready to e-mail off. The next three are roughed out. Hey, it’s only 500 words. I can hardly say “hello” in that amount of words!

Here’s the first tip in my first column:

QC tip #1: Always keep some basic mixes in the fridge for quick cooking.

For me, that means my Savory Butter (done in an earlier column in this blog) and my delicious, adaptable Cream Cheese Spread.

Here’s the recipe:

8 ounces cream cheese (low fat okay)

3 tablespoons prepared horseradish (not creamy)

Soften cream cheese at room temperature. Vigorously stir in horseradish. After use, cover and refrigerate.

I use this as a sandwich spread in wraps, as a dip for fruits and veggies ,mixed with cooked, hot hamburg for a chip dip, and to sauté mushrooms or other veggies as a side dish or appetizer.

You like? Try both and see what other uses you can create for my Quick Cook mixes.