Hey Najia! I love this blog so much! I have a question. I find cooking pretty difficult sometimes. I'm chronically ill and also the kitchen stresses me out a bit because I'm very scatterbrained and there's knives and fire and stuff. I also fuck things up in the kitchen pretty easy. Are there any recipes on here you find particularly easy to make? That you'd recommend for when you just cannot be arsed? Hope you're having a wonderful day, I know it's your birthday 😄🎉
Thank you!
I can understand your stress—cooking can involve things that are objectively dangerous and also time-sensitive. I'd recommend:
Try recipes where you don't have to come into direct contact with the blades you use. Some Indian dals, for example, cook lentils in a sauce made from blended onion, tomato, and garlic; you could process them using a food processor or blender. A lot of things (fresh salsa, guacamole, a duqqa of garlic, chilies, and spices that you can throw in to cook with some lentils) can be prepared in a mortar and pestle, too.
I've never used one, but a vegetable chopper might help in a similar way that a food processor would, by reducing the amount of knifework that you have to do. There are a lot of recipes where a chopped onion is the only knifework required.
Also try recipes that are cooked in the oven, and not on the stovetop. Something that gets thrown into the oven on low heat to cook (like a casserole or fukharat dish) takes longer, but is more hands-off, than something that's cooked on the stove.
Do all of your prep work first. Read through the recipe and see what chopping, blending &c. needs to be done, prep each ingredient, and put it in its own little bowl. This includes anything in the ingredients list that says "1 onion, diced" or similar: do that right off the bat. If the recipe says "meanwhile" or asks you to do prep for anything while anything else is cooking, you might choose to disregard that and do all the prep first, depending on how long the cook time is and how much attention it needs (e.g., soup on a low simmer for half an hour can pretty much be left alone; anything in a frying pan cannot). This way you won't be rushing to chop anything quickly while worrying that something else is going to overcook.
Look for vegetables, like broccoli / cauliflower / romanesco and green beans, that can be broken up with your hands rather than chopped. Rip up cilantro and parsley rather than chopping them.
Admittedly "simple" is not the guiding principle of this blog, but here are some recipes that I think could be easily adapted:
Fukharat l3des: just one onion to chop. Cooked on low heat in the oven.
Fried tofu sandwich: just mixing sauces and spices. You can skip coating the tofu in cornstarch and frying it. Instead try freezing the whole block, thawing it, cutting into two or four pieces, and then marinating it in a plastic bag with your sauce overnight. Then bake the tofu for 15-20 minutes, turning once, at 350 °F (180 °C).
Roasted celery and potato soup: requires only very rough chopping; the cooking methods are baking and simmering. The fried tempering could be skipped by just adding those ingredients into the simmer earlier.
Carrot salad or chickpea salad or tapenade: you could throw all of the ingredients in a food processor.
Moroccan lentils: just an onion and tomato to grate or process.
Kashmiri lal chaman: the only thing you need to cut is tofu; the gravy is just water and spices. You could bake the tofu instead of frying it.
Black bean burgers: no chopping or frying if you omit the onion and carrot and elect to bake the finished patties.
'Chicken' and olive tajine: the marinade is blended or pounded, and there is no other prepwork to do other than chopping one onion. Everything can be simmered on low heat until cooked, so it's pretty hands-off.
Chana pulao: mostly rice, chickpeas, and spices. Some aromatic prep, but you could crush instead of chopping those.
Romanesco quiche: no knifework at all if you omit the aromatics and break aprt the romanesco with your hands.
Spanish garlic mushrooms: just crush garlic instead of slicing and buy pre-sliced mushrooms. There is frying, though.
Eggplant cooked salad: the eggplant is broiled and then spooned out. No knifework required if you use tomato puree.
Butternut squash soup: just roasting and simmering. No knifework required if you omit the aromatics and buy pre-cubed squash.
Dishes with a base of lentils, chickpeas, beans, rice, and/or noodles are great because there's no knifework that needs to be done to prepare the beans &c. themselves.
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