We were talking about food, food blogs, recipes, and the inspiration behind them...the discussion was whether the blog should be only about the recipes...or not...
I was under the impression that the few posts that I had managed to write till date included the people who had been behind the dish...the inspirer so to say...well at least in a couple of them...my writing still being in it's nascent stage...I would get to all eventually..but I was surprised to note that...that was not the consensus...
So I did a rethink...and decided that maybe I could have a post without an actual recipe...difficult but let's try...
Now it is not that tough to write about some of my favourite cooks...esp. celeb cooks ...but could I do a whole post without a mention of any of their dishes...nuhuh...
So here's my post on soups in general and Rachael Ray...why soups you ask ? ....well that was one of the major things that I was inspired from her...it was more the style than the actual ingredients...
Rachael Ray has a 30 minutes show on Food Network Channel in US, where we were based for a few years...and as I was not working at the time...was pretty hooked onto...
I also had the time to cook and try out various new recipes,styles ( indian and others)...and ofcourse experiment with new ingredients too...
I had made soups earlier too...but added a whole new method of preparation...following RR ( short for Rachael Ray )...of putting on the pan - and cutting and dicing in order the ingredients go in...
For e.g. she would take some EVOO ( extra virgin olive oil ) in a pan - then start cutting up onions, garlic, then a bunch of different veggies ( sometimes even non-veg ) and legumes into the pot, add tons of tomatoes, cook till it is all tender...add seasonings...and there you have it an hearty soup or as she called it "stoup" which was one of the words coined by her - to mean something which is thicker than soup but thinner than stew...
She has made up words to better describe her thoughts like ...yum-o being one of them, delish being another...and using first letters short form like the above EVOO...
She has a lot of Italian dishes in her repertoire...so pastas were definitely a part of it...learnt a lot from that too..
So anyways getting back to the soups...I do make them in many different ways, at times I make it the RR method - at times just by pressure cooking some veggies, at times I leave them in chunks or sometimes I mash them up a bit so we get a thickened soup with bits of veggies or legumes in it...or sometimes I even puree it so that we can have a clear soup...
The ingredients change depending on what I have on hand...but as I said before it was the method that I had learned.
The first time I saw her cutting up garlic by smashing the pod with the flat side of the chef's knife really amused me - I was so impressed with the ease with which she removed the skin thru that process and also managed to make a paste of the garlic...not much chopping was required after she was through with it...( it had no place to go other than the pot ).... :)
The thing I loved more than her recipes is her warm chatty style of presenting...speaking to her viewers like her friends and not putting on any airs...she is also very open about her shortcomings ..one of which she mentioned on her show...is that she is not very good at baking....cause she is not good at measuring stuff out...and baking was all about that...
She is more of a "a pinch of this and a dash of that " sort of person...more used to "eyeballing" it ( in her vocab )...but yet managed to convey the proportions of her dish.
For someone like me, who is just the opposite of the above method....and who loves to measure...so that I am sure of my ground, and the end result...it is surprising that I would watch and love her shows...but watch I did...and appreciated them too...
So here's wishing her all the continued sucess in her shows and life...and may she inspire many more budding cooks.
I was under the impression that the few posts that I had managed to write till date included the people who had been behind the dish...the inspirer so to say...well at least in a couple of them...my writing still being in it's nascent stage...I would get to all eventually..but I was surprised to note that...that was not the consensus...
So I did a rethink...and decided that maybe I could have a post without an actual recipe...difficult but let's try...
Now it is not that tough to write about some of my favourite cooks...esp. celeb cooks ...but could I do a whole post without a mention of any of their dishes...nuhuh...
So here's my post on soups in general and Rachael Ray...why soups you ask ? ....well that was one of the major things that I was inspired from her...it was more the style than the actual ingredients...
Rachael Ray has a 30 minutes show on Food Network Channel in US, where we were based for a few years...and as I was not working at the time...was pretty hooked onto...
I also had the time to cook and try out various new recipes,styles ( indian and others)...and ofcourse experiment with new ingredients too...
I had made soups earlier too...but added a whole new method of preparation...following RR ( short for Rachael Ray )...of putting on the pan - and cutting and dicing in order the ingredients go in...
For e.g. she would take some EVOO ( extra virgin olive oil ) in a pan - then start cutting up onions, garlic, then a bunch of different veggies ( sometimes even non-veg ) and legumes into the pot, add tons of tomatoes, cook till it is all tender...add seasonings...and there you have it an hearty soup or as she called it "stoup" which was one of the words coined by her - to mean something which is thicker than soup but thinner than stew...
She has made up words to better describe her thoughts like ...yum-o being one of them, delish being another...and using first letters short form like the above EVOO...
She has a lot of Italian dishes in her repertoire...so pastas were definitely a part of it...learnt a lot from that too..
So anyways getting back to the soups...I do make them in many different ways, at times I make it the RR method - at times just by pressure cooking some veggies, at times I leave them in chunks or sometimes I mash them up a bit so we get a thickened soup with bits of veggies or legumes in it...or sometimes I even puree it so that we can have a clear soup...
The ingredients change depending on what I have on hand...but as I said before it was the method that I had learned.
The first time I saw her cutting up garlic by smashing the pod with the flat side of the chef's knife really amused me - I was so impressed with the ease with which she removed the skin thru that process and also managed to make a paste of the garlic...not much chopping was required after she was through with it...( it had no place to go other than the pot ).... :)
The thing I loved more than her recipes is her warm chatty style of presenting...speaking to her viewers like her friends and not putting on any airs...she is also very open about her shortcomings ..one of which she mentioned on her show...is that she is not very good at baking....cause she is not good at measuring stuff out...and baking was all about that...
She is more of a "a pinch of this and a dash of that " sort of person...more used to "eyeballing" it ( in her vocab )...but yet managed to convey the proportions of her dish.
For someone like me, who is just the opposite of the above method....and who loves to measure...so that I am sure of my ground, and the end result...it is surprising that I would watch and love her shows...but watch I did...and appreciated them too...
So here's wishing her all the continued sucess in her shows and life...and may she inspire many more budding cooks.
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