Creativity in cooking

Creativity in cooking

When you have to eat at least 730 times in a year (that’s two meals in a day), eating would be boring if you have too little variety to choose from. Variety does not only refer to having different choices for the type of food to eat but variety in type of cooking styles should also be considered. Preparing foods in the same style will bore the whole family. Lack of variety in cooking style may also be unhealthy, imagine if you always eat fried foods (that can translate to higher fat intakes) or on the other hand if you’ll always have boiled or grilled foods (lack of essential fatty acids, may also become a problem). It is recommended that different cooking styles be applied to everyday preparation of foods. Try the following in your homes:


Bake. Prepare a cheesy chicken pie. Create your mixture of vegetables, spices and seasoning plus your diced chicken and put everything in pastry dough and bake them.


Deep Fry. Chicken are most enjoyed by everyone when it’s deep fried with its crunchy breading. But putting on breading can increase the absorbed fat in the cooked food, to minimize fats, use kitchen towels to blot out excess fats.


Grill. Get your whole fish and instead of frying (that may minimize its omega three content), grill it whole stuffed with onion, tomato and ginger.


Roast. Cooking your chicken under direct heat. You can roast your cubed chicken fillet together with cubed potato and carrots.


Steam. This method of cooking does take a longer time, but most often helps retain the original flavor in the food. Steam fish fillet with ginger and a little soy sauce and crushed garlic makes a good dish.


Stew. One way of preparing chicken stew is to use a slow cooker (crock pot). Put all your ingredients inside the pot, cook overnight and you’ll have a delicious stew for breakfast or even lunch. With this method of cooking, it is a great way to introduce veggies like carrots and tomatoes that adds color and nutritional goodness to the main dish.


Stir-Fry. We Asians love this method of cooking as it is quick and also helps retain the nutritional value of the food. Just like in stewing, it is easy for us to add lots of veggies into the main dish.


These are all seven different types of cooking methods which you can schedule for seven days in a week! See, there can be variety of styles you can use for cooking and be able to avoid just having fried foods most of the time. As promised for this week, here's a simple fish recipe that you can try at home for a stir-fried fish:


Ingredients:


½ kg fish fillet (skinned)

1 tsp. salt

1 tbsp oil

50 gm frozen peas (cooked)

50 gm frozen sweet corn (cooked)

6 tbsp chicken stock or water

2 tsp dry sherry

2 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp cornflour, blended with 1 tsp water spring
onion flowers, to garnish


Instruction for Cooking:


1. Cut the fillet into 1 inch-wide strips, sprinkle with salt; leave for 15 minutes.

2. Heat the oil in frying pan, add the fish and stir-fry for 3 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients, except the blended cornflour and bring to boil.

3. Stir in the blended cornflour and cook for 1 minute.

4. Garnish the cooked dish with spring onion flowers and serve immediately.


Here onwards, practice variety of cooking methods applied to your daily meals.