Very often in the comments, people express in one form or another a strange and incomprehensible position in life for me:
- We are poor, we cannot afford delicacies, therefore it is stupid to bother with cooking!
Not in the sense that we won't cook, no. The fact that there is no point in spending a lot of effort on preparing cheap products - the very ones that are considered "food for the poor." Like, don't do it with them, nothing tasty will come of it. So, fuel for the body, which you choke, but swallow - from need and hopelessness.
Recently wrote:
- What dorado, but do you want a blue whiting?
I decided to answer here: I want. Fish is great. And blue whiting too. After all, you can wash it and just throw it into the pan, and yes, you get a kind of symbol of poverty, eat - and you choke with tears from self-pity. And you can gently peel even the skinny fish, roll in flour and salt, fry gently, then cover with onions and with all this stew... Or you can spass the onion with tomato paste separately, add carrots, vinegar, pepper, pour the fried blue whiting with this marinade and darken. You can spend a little more time, peeling the fish, chopping and sticking cutlets or meatballs. And eat it all with pleasure.
Even barley porridge - and that can be delicious. Boil the cereal for about five minutes, then dry it in the oven or in a dry frying pan until a nutty aroma appears, and only then either cook the porridge or a side dish from it.
Dreary dumplings with potatoes (and any “empty” potato dish) are easily enriched with well-fried onions. It takes five minutes to make it, but no, some people prefer to squeeze a tear out of those around them, saying that "only empty potatoes with our salaries are available."
Gray pasta, the cheapest, and those can be made "lick your fingers" by frying directly from the bag (dry) in vegetable oil with the aroma of seeds, and then do not boil, but simmer, adding a few tablespoons of soy sauce.
Soy sauce saves any food, except sweet ones. And it is inexpensive - a small bottle can be found for twenty or thirty rubles.
Vegetarian borscht (to make it sharper) goes great with the simplest cakes: water, flour, salt. Knead the dough, roll it into thin pita bread and fry. There is garlic - great, chop a clove with salt and sprinkle them on top. You don't need any bread!
The finest soups are prepared on soup sets and bones, which are sold under the name "stews". You just need to first wash these bones and send them to the oven - bake until brown. Without this technique, by the way, the broth will never be tasty - even buy beef with bones for 400, or even a stew for a hundred rubles.
Why am I writing this - IMHO, you can cook deliciously from everything and always. The main thing is to want to do this, and not to use food as a way to arouse pity in others and show yourself to be "poor and unfortunate."