Art of cooking effortlessly and quickly : With a menu as example

Art of cooking effortlessly and quickly : Indian food

 Most  women panic when we have guests or potlucks . Lot of work and everything needs to be perfect. My mom was working mom and i have seen her work effortlessly and multitask and superfast. She didnt let me help her hence i might not have learnt much from her, but as i work in my kitchen now i realise that just by watching her work i have learnt how to be something like her, of course no one can be as perfect as her.

This Sunday we have planned to take some lunch to family's place and prepared some small menu. Its not much grand or too much but i thought of using this as example and typing in some tips about multitasking in kitchen to save time. 

 This blog post is pertaining mainly to one particular chosen menu. Soon i will type another blog post for general efficient cooking tips. 

This article includes 

  * Quick cooking tips.

  * Clean and mess free cooking tips.

  * Good planning 

  * Menu links of items prepared and shown in pix.  I have not yet typed all these recipes yet, but I plan to update this post as and when i type. 

  * How to get spouse help and some ready-made food help so that you are not stressed. 

 The menu I made is : 

 1. Pasta using whole wheat rotini and mix veggies. Recipe not typed yet. I will soon type recipe and include its link here. 

 2. Kheema . Recipe link is below : 

 http://recipesens.blogspot.com/2015/11/kheema-aloo-minced-lamb-with-potatoes.html

3. Simple matar pulao , as it has to go with kheema and chicken curry.  Matar pulao recipe will be updated soon too. 

 

4. Chicken curry . Well i make chicken curry in too many different styles. The recipe of this particular one i will update soon. Trust me this turned out awesome. It was my personal favorite among all dishes of the day. 

 

5. Pizza . I will tell you what i did to make my work easy. 

 6. Buffalo wings

 7. Ice cream for dessert. 

Here are some pointers :

1. PLANNING MENU

Plan ahead and decide menu. Dont chew more than you can bite. Think about the time you have and your energy and your capacity and plan. No one will complain ,everybody understands your situation.  

In my menu above , i decided one variety of rice, One thinner Gravy , one dry gravy , one type of dish for kids and grown ups as well, one item which is definitely kid's favorite  and one dessert. 

* For rice i chose matar pulao in simple style coz my chicken gravy and kheema were heavy. I had to match. 

* Chicken gravy is kind of easy for me to make and most people like little fluidy gravy with rice. 

* Dry item i chose lamb kheema as i had chicken already . Yes remember to keep variety. 

* I chose pasta coz its easy and quick to make if you use store brought sauce. (remember no stressing, no one will complain if you have one good tried and tested store sauce which are confidentwill work with your pasta type.) and to make it healthy its whole wheat pasta too. 

* The pizza we used is store brought frozen baked at home in 8 minutes while other dishes were being cooked. I had three pizzas which went in oven all at once . 

I chose Amy's organic magarettha pizza . (which is also halal and even vegetarians can use as it has no animal product in it) 

*Buffalo wings were brought from near by Afghan halal restaurant.  

* We took icre cream boxes right out of our freezer and thankfully our guests had not tasted it earlier and loved the flavour. we had black berry crumble ice cream. 

2.  TAKING HELP 

* Take your spouse help, dont take all burden on yourself. 

I asked my husband to do these chores. 

* Cutting all of onion that i used in all of dishes. I explained to him how thin and what style. 

*  He helped me measure and wash rice .

* He washed chicken and kheema and cut chicken in right size that i needed. 

* He got food from outside that we didnt cook at home. 

* He kept our kid out of kitchen and entertained to let me work easily. 

3. USE OF READY ITEMS 

* To save time and energy use what ever is store available.

* My pasta sauce is ready from store. 

 * I used frozen mix vegetables packet . 

* Use of frozen green  sweet peas packet. 

* Frozen pizza 

* Wings from restaurant. 

* Dessert from store.

4. MULTI TASK And work in order OF IMPORTANCE

*   First i got onion cut and i left all of onions to fry at once in big sauce pan. They were golden like i needed in 15 minutes.

* While onions were being ready i  put masala in chicken and in kheema. And i peeled and cut potatoes. 

* Then i divided them in two equal big and one small portion. 

*  I put one big portion of onion in cooker and added chicken and continued with chicken recipe which i will update soon. 

* In another cooker i added the other big portion of onion fried and kheema as per kheema recipe skipping step one of recipe and continued with cooking as in link below:

http://recipesens.blogspot.com/2015/11/kheema-aloo-minced-lamb-with-potatoes.html

* Next on third stove i used same saucepan i fried onion in  and added washed rice and made matar pulao. Recipe will be updated soon. 

* One fourth stove i started pasta. Yes all this was done in the order described above side by side. all at once.  Pasta recipe will be updated soon too. 

* In between doing all above four dishes at once i had left oven on preheating and put pizzas in there and removed after 8 minutes as per instruction. 

5. CLEAN-UP RIGHT THEN 

As and when you make some mess clean immediately. 

* Keep one light weight plastic plate to put peels. when u peel onion ,peel in this plate and peel all onions first before cutting. All peels in plate go in bin at once. 

* Next when u peel potatoes use same plates to put all potatoes peel in it. And to save time first peel all potatoes at once , then start cutting.  Do all peeling this way.

* Use this same plate to keep your spoons as you stir and leave them . Do not leave cooking or measuring spoons on countertop or stove or cooking vessels. 

* wipe any water droplets as soon as they fall . Keep mopping hand towels in reach as you cook. 

Follow these steps and you will not have huge mess waiting for you to clean when you are tired after cooking.