A few weeks ago I felt like making an
enchilada casserole. In America, this had always been an easy, yet satisfying
meal. In Mongolia, it’s a three or four hour process. Recipes online contain a
helpful list of ingredients like “a package of corn tortillas, a can of
enchilada sauce, a block of cheese product” etc. A week or so later I decided I
wanted to make a cheesy broccoli chicken and rice casserole and was once again
confronted with “a can of” this time cream of chicken. A common issue with many
recipes is that they are not designed for cooking from scratch. It is assumed
that the American reading the recipe on Allrecipes.com will go to Walmart and
purchase the bulk/processed foods. My time in Mongolia has led to a discovery
of the joys of cooking from scratch, which has its challenges, but Peace Corps
service is nothing if not challenging, and PCVs are nothing if not resourceful,
so as my second year of service winds down, I’ve realized that I’ve picked up a
lot of great experience on cooking from scratch. This list is a short
compilation of advice and shortcuts that I’ve picked up on the way.
- Almost always use more garlic—People
who write recipes with only one or two cloves of garlic don’t know what
garlic taste like. If I want garlic to be a flavor in a dish, then I use
about a half a bunch or 6-7 cloves per dish, or about a clove a serving.
- Crushed Peppercorn is underrated—I’ve
taken to crushing the kernels between the flat of a knife and a cutting
board. This leads to a fresh flavor every time that is a great addition of
pepper in any dish. Pepper grinders are nice, but the kernels can get
stale.
- Dried Parsley is underrated—Seriously,
I never used this herb in America, but it is a great addition to almost
any dish. It can provide a nice color and a subtle flavor that is almost
never overpowering.
- Parsley and Oregano are forgiving
herbs—It is pretty hard to put too much parsley or oregano in a dish.
The enormous amount of dried herb required to make a dish overpowered with
either of these is easy to avoid.
On the opposite side of the scale, basil, thyme, and dill are not
forgiving herbs. Use as needed.
- Semolina flour is a good substitute
for corn starch—I’ve used this as a corn starch substitute for pies,
soups, tortillas, etc., and have not been disappointed. The course
middling from which the flour is derived gives it a grainy texture similar
to corn starch. In Mongolia, this is sold in purple bags of the generic
brand that you find everywhere.
- Pungent meat? Remove the fat—Mongolians
use a lot of fat in their cooking. The fat from sheep and goats is quite
pungent. I tend to cut away most of the fat on red meat. It’s not that
nutritious, and the meat tastes better without. An additional plus is a
snack for one of our stray furry friends.
- Iron Horsemeat? Kosher it—Horse meat can sometimes
have high amounts of blood in the tissue. By removing the blood, you can
reduce that iron flavor that can be overwhelming. Jewish practices of
Kosher for meat can be done easily in Mongolia and remove blood. Here’s a
link to 4 different methods to remove blood from meat. http://www.wikihow.com/Kosher-Meat The best horse I’ve had in Mongolia is
meat that a Kazak family had hung, salted, smoked, and then slow cooked.
It was divine.
- Martha Stewart knows how to boil eggs—I
started using this method in America; it is great for making boiled eggs
that peal easy. First, put the eggs
in a pot with water and a lid. Bring the water to a rolling boil. Remove
the pot from heat and allow the eggs to sit, covered in the hot water for
10-13 minutes. Then dump the hot water and chill the eggs quickly with
cold water. The residual heat method cooks the eggs all the way through,
and the immediate cold causes the membranes to avoid sticking to the egg
leading to an easy peel.
- Two ways to thicken creamy soups
without flour clumps—The first method, learned from my father, must be
done at the beginning using a French roux. The roux is a combination of
butter and flour, sometimes milk or sautéed onions that is cooked until it
reaches a darker color, at which point the fluids of the soup can be
added. Rouxs are great for sauces and thick soups, especially Cajun
cuisine, but can also be pretty easy to mess up by overcooking or undercooking. A second method is to cook the soup base
first, then when you want to thicken your creamy soup, combine melted
butter and flour until you have thick pasty mixture. Then add this to the
soup. The butter combined with the flour prevents it from clumping and
allows the flour to thicken the soup consistently. When using this method,
you can also mix in a lot of seasonings that you want to add to the hot
soup keeping your pepper from clumping too!
- Curry dishes use a lot of curry—The
trick to a good dish with curry is to use a lot of it. This can seem weird
especially since curry is often sold in small containers, but good curry
rice sometimes needs more than two tablespoons of curry to create that
nice Indian color and flavor.
- Marinades (an easy path to flavor)—Marinades
are a great way to bring flavor to dishes that are baked, stir-fried, or
grilled. I usually make my own
marinades that are little different depending on the dish. A basic
marinade may contain two parts olive oil, one part water, ½ to one part
light vinegar (I love using the
Korean apple vinegar), some salt, and seasonings galore. Seriously,
don’t be afraid to try new things with seasonings. I’ve done marinades
with twists toward Indian, Italian, and spicy Mexican cuisines. The trick
to a good marinade is to allow the meat or tofu to sit in it for at least
an hour at room temperature. Refrigerate if you intend marinating
overnight. A lot of recipes would
have you remove the meat from the marinade, but I’ve enjoyed dumping
everything into a skillet or baking pan with veggies for flavor infused
dishes that are served great with a side of rice or potatoes.
- Bread crumbs are better than flour for
fried cheese sticks and baked chicken—Flour battered chicken sometimes
doesn’t achieve the ideal texture when baked. Bread crumbs, instead of
flour, work better for stuffed chicken breast. Cheese sticks are great,
but it can be hard to get a good coating using only flour and egg.
- Cream cheese is good for baking—This
is hard to do in Mongolia, but it is sometimes possible to find cream
cheese in aimag centers. Cream cheese holds its shape in dishes, like
stuffed chicken breast, better than regular cheese which can melt and
spread all over the place.
- Woops the salt exploded—We’ve all
been there. It is a hard place to recover from, but if a dish is too salty
it is possible to use light vinegar (not
the concentrated crap) and lemon juice to remove the flavor and bring
the dish back to edible.
- Secret to rising dough—If you are
using a dough that has yeast, then the secret to success is creating a
warm humid environment for the yeast to live for thousands of generations
before you obliterate their world in your oven. My favorite method, also
learned from my father, is to place a half full mug of water in the
microwave and let it cook for 7 or 8 minutes until the inside of the
microwave is steamy. Then place your dough inside this environment in a
container with plenty of room for growth. Usually most doughs only need
about 30 minutes to rise successfully in this environment. This can be a
lot trickier without a microwave, but it is possible to create a warm
humid environment by placing your hot water under a larger container with
the dough preferably near the ger stove.
- You can’t walk away from good cooking—American
recipes are so often centered around “Just 30 min of prep time!” When you
are cooking from scratch it really becomes a process that can take hours.
For the enchilada casserole I made, it was necessary to first prepare the
enchilada sauce. I then needed to make tortillas and pan fry them. After
this I sautéed meat and veggies, adding taco seasoning to flavor the dish.
Then I had to grate the cheese. This was followed by assembling the
casserole. It was only when the casserole was in the oven that I could
walk away and do something else. Walking away becomes especially
impossible when cooking on a hot plate or stove top. It is really easy to
burn things if they are not stirred regularly. If you are creating a
dessert on a stove top, like a pie filling, forget about doing anything
else. The sugar in these recipes makes them ridiculously easy to burn.
- Taste often—Adding the finishing
touches to flavoring a dish is not always something that can be taught. It
is more of a skill acquired from lots of practice, successes, and
fails. Until you have firm
understanding of how certain herbs and spices flavor a dish, it is best to
take things slowly tasting often to determine what needs to be added. It
is always easier to add to a dish then to recover from too much of
anything.
- Finally, don’t accept limitations—One
of the biggest successes in cooking from scratch in Mongolia is to let the
sky be your limit. Many of the best meals I’ve made are things that seemed
impossible, but when broken into smaller pieces yielded great results.
Even with a limited selection of products at stores, it is still possible
to find new and exciting ways to create the dishes you want to eat.
~Caleb
