You Don’t Need a Competition to Have a Winning Experience in the Kitchen. When it’s time to cook dinner for the family, you don’t have to make the best dish in the least amount of time and plate it perfectly. You don’t have to precisely recreate your grandmother’s beef stroganoff or her cherry pie to deliver a delicious meal. It’s not necessary to have expert knife skills, know how to make perfect icing rosettes, or to have ever even heard of durian fruit to create a satisfying meal.
If you get most of your cooking lessons from television, you may mistakenly believe that speed is critical to the equation or that all dishes must look beautiful on the plate to taste good. It’s easy to see why you’d think that. There’s no shortage of cooking shows in which contestants must make difficult preparations in extremely short periods of time. Chopped, Top Chef, MasterChef, Food Network Star, Iron Chef, and Cupcake Wars are just a few of the many available at the end of the remote.
A little binge watching can be fun, but it can also be intimidating. How many times have you walked past beautiful Swiss chard, fresh baby ginger, soybeans on the branch, or rich purple eggplant at the farmer’s market because you had a sudden glimpse in your head of rushing to try to get them prepped, cooked, and on the plate that led to an immediate fear that you’d never succeed? It’s a bit ironic that the construct of these shows gets us interested in cooking and compels us to watch a complete episode, but may hold us back in our own kitchens.
With cooking, as with anything in life, you don’t know what you can achieve until you get in the game and you never know how good you can be until you’re willing to learn from failure. If you’ve read my series on the Benefits of Cooking, you already know many of the incredible skills that can be learned in the kitchen, but beyond fractions, ratios, chemistry, and process thinking, resilience may be the most valuable lesson of all.
Even a failure in the kitchen may be delicious – an overcooked caramel takes on a bitterness that some people prefer; an accidental charred edge on lasagne or even kale can be the best part of the dish. Even slightly burned rice takes on an interesting dimension of flavor.
So, with no fear of competition, how about we get in the kitchen and give this simple, hearty dish a try? This was one of my go-to recipes as a working, single mom with kids to feed. You don’t have to hurry because this is so easy and cooks so fast, you’ll have dinner ready in less time than it takes to drive to a restaurant, ordering, and getting your food.
Chicken and Rice
Serves 4
2 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cups quick cooking Royal Rice Blend
1/4 white onion
1 package of boneless, skinless chicken tenders
Salt
Ground black pepper
Garlic powder
In medium pot, combine water, rice and onion. Add chicken tenders. Sprinkle liberally with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Turn burner to high and allow water to come to a boil. Stir, reduce heat to medium or low and simmer for 15 minutes. You want a low boil in the pan as you simmer. Continue to cook for 2 – 3 minutes if needed to boil away any extra liquid. Turn off heat and allow to sit with cover on for 5 minutes. Remove onion if desired. Serve hot.
The addition of a simple green salad or a fruit salad topped with yogurt turns this into a full, nutritious meal. Of course there are other options as well. While the Chicken and Rice is simmering, there’s time to steam some fresh broccoli, asparagus, or sugar snap peas. If none of those sound like a fit for your family, you can also play with the Chicken and Rice.
Chop a few baby carrots into small pieces and add to the rice before you turn on the heat. The carrots will cook right along with the rice. Don’t like carrots? After 10 – 12 minutes of simmering, add some frozen English peas to the pot and continue to cook as per the recipe. Another option is to give this dish a more spanish flair by adding some precooked black beans, a bit of Rotel® Original Diced Tomatoes and Green Chilies, and a sprinkle of cumin and a sprinkle of chili powder. One-third cup of both the beans and Rotel should be adequate, but use more or less depending on your preference.
I cooked this last night and it took less than 30 minutes from start to finish. I say that only to illustrate that this is a great throw-together entrée for a busy night. If it takes you 45 minutes or an hour, that’s fine too. Thank goodness you don’t need a competition to have a winning experience in the kitchen!
http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/chopped/chopped-full-episodes.html
http://www.bravotv.com/top-chef
http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/food-network-star.html
http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/iron-chef-america/episodes.html
Today’s the perfect day to lighten up a barbecue with a green salad. For 78% of us, the 4th of July includes a barbecue. Along with the burgers, brats, hot dogs, chicken, and ribs you’re sure to find plenty of potato salad, baked beans, and corn-on-the-cob. What’s often missing from the table is something light and green. While salad may not be practical for some environments, it can work well at a back yard barbecue.
Strawberries, blueberries, or blackberries are delicious additions to a green salad, but I usually reserve those for indoor meals rather than a barbecue. The same with arugula, butter lettuce, and chard. It’s easier to control the quality of delicate ingredients at an indoor party. 
For the past two weeks, it’s felt like 108ª outside and all I can think over and over again is: if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen! Once we hit the middle of summer, it’s always hot in my kitchen, but this year the sweltering started a couple of months early. 
While my west facing kitchen may hold more heat than some, at these temps everyone’s kitchen seems hot.
It’s true that there are many gluten-free packaged foods that taste unpleasant, and a few bad experiences can even make an adult skeptical. I took some cookies to a Final Four party the other night. Of course, I advertised them as gluten-free. While this appealed to a couple whose son is gluten-intolerant, everyone else was immediately hesitant to try them. Mind you, these were homemade oatmeal cookies fresh out of the oven, not something odd and unheard of. I watched the crowd tentatively view the pan until finally one person tried a cookie and eagerly finished it. The ice was broken. By the time the evening ended, only a couple of cookies were left. Thank goodness for that first adventurous taster.