Cooking Simple Dishes at Home for a Healthier and Happier Lifestyle

During the interval between three meals a day, I always like to continue to cook something in the kitchen, which seems to be part of the background and background of life. Knowing that the time slipping away at this moment has contributed to the deliciousness, I will feel at ease.

Bake a dim sum in the oven , make red bean paste with tangerine peel in a broken machine , stew a can of Laohuo soup in a large casserole , or simmer in Kanto cooking , or even just soak some fish maw and sea cucumber, and marinate it for the next meal All ingredients are fine.

Taking care of your diet is very important to the health of your family. It really takes some effort to strike a good balance between healthy nutrition and gluttonous delicacy.

The food in the restaurant is not good to eat all the time. In many cases, in order to taste better, more seasonings are usually added, and the taste is more exciting. If you eat a few heavy meals in a row, you will feel that your body is a bit overburdened, and you are prone to acne, especially for dinner. Eating greasy food will also affect your sleep quality. If you cook by yourself, you can control and choose the best raw materials within your ability. If there are no problems with the ingredients, cooking is relatively simple.

Knowing the taste of the family, whoever likes to eat can take care of everything. When children and adults eat delicious food, their faces naturally smile, and their eyes are shining. At that moment, they really have a sense of accomplishment with a “mother power” index that explodes. Sometimes I think about it, although I spend a lot of time and energy on daily shopping, cooking, tidying up, processing ingredients, and researching different recipes, but when I eat to my heart’s content, the feeling of healing is still very worthwhile.

One day, the family discussed that they wanted to eat green curry chicken , so they immediately went to the vegetable market to order local chicken legs. At noon the next day, they brought out a pot of Thai-style green curry chicken legs and vegetables cooked with thick coconut milk, as well as casserole. Braised crystal clear rice. My son poured a large spoonful of curry on the rice, took a bite impatiently, and said to me: “Little pig, you have a quick taste, it’s so delicious, you’ll scream.” The crispy rice is all eaten.

When the children are on vacation, the focus is on lunch, and dinner will be lighter. When he was in school, he would have a good dinner for him. If he was not satisfied at school at noon, he could make up for it.

I like to read recipes very much, and I can be flexible by reading more and practicing more. I am very casual when cooking, sometimes I will look through what is in the refrigerator and mix it randomly. In fact, you need to be flexible when looking at the recipes, otherwise the purchase pressure will be great. For example, I ate a bit heavy at noon, and made a lighter loofah ball soup at night . Adding half a finely diced pear to the meatballs can add a crisp and sweet taste, which is better than pure meatballs. I usually add water chestnuts when making meatballs, but today I happened to have a pear, which came in handy.

When you can’t think of what to eat, just stretch it out. In fact, there are a lot of possibilities for a meatball . You can choose fish balls, fish balls with tofu, shrimp balls, cuttlefish balls, beef balls, etc.

Cooking slowly is a good way for me to rest. Many good ideas about teaching are thought of while cooking. Cooking makes me relax, and it is easy to be inspired when people relax.

the simplest pleasure

Eating delicious food can be said to be the simplest thing in life and the fastest way to get satisfaction.

In life, the difficulties that people have to face, such as birth, old age, sickness and death, are almost all written down, but there are also a few happiness that are inherent and effective for a long time, such as sleeping well to be full of energy, and eating well is easier to be happy. satisfaction. The happiness brought about by eating more carefully and eating better is very low cost and very effective.

Zhang Han, a celebrity in the Western Jin Dynasty, was disappointed with the imperial power and morality, so he left the officialdom and returned home on the grounds that it was already the season of wild rice and perch in his hometown -the autumn wind is blowing, and I want to go back to eat delicious food. There are many stories like this throughout the ages. Fame and wealth can only be obtained through hard work, but eating and enjoying vegetables with the four seasons is an eternal step in life.

I love to eat, and I love to cook. I am willing to spend a long time and travel a lot to eat something I like, and I am willing to satisfy myself. A friend once said that it smells delicious when I eat it. I think that the attitude towards food is very important. If you take eating as a serious matter, you will be in a state of peace and enjoyment. If you can eat a lot of flavors, your appetite will naturally be good.

I have a row of cookbooks on my bookshelf. To cook by myself, the most important thing for me is the need to reproduce and practice food. I once ate a French-style oxtail stew in a Vietnamese restaurant. I thought it was so delicious. I went back and checked various recipes, tried repeatedly, and finally made an oxtail that tasted almost the same. The sense of accomplishment was really strong, and the drawing The mood is the same after writing a satisfactory work.

British designer Ilse Crawford (Ilse Crawford), who I like very much, once wrote a book about the beauty of life. One of the scenes impressed me very much: a marble case is full of various dried fruits , fruits, and vegetables, and a pair of beautiful hands wearing jewelry are chopping vegetables. There is a sentence on the screen: Food is like love, either you don’t touch it, or you put your heart into it .

I have a deep understanding of this sentence. If you are full of enthusiasm when cooking, it will really taste better. If you just deal with it to satisfy your hunger, it will be difficult to taste delicious. It can be seen that even in ordinary things like cooking, it is very important whether you use your heart or not.

some recipes

Here are a few simple recipes that I cook for you.

freshly ground pepper noodles

The freshly made pepper noodles and pepper oil are particularly full-bodied, especially the pepper noodles, which must be lightly fried before grinding. For example, freshly made mapo tofu, sprinkled with freshly made pepper noodles, will enhance the taste and aroma to a higher level.

steamed tenderloin

I read “Drinking Notes” for a while, and learned about this dish. It is very easy to make and the effect is very good.

Choose a whole tenderloin and marinate it with salt, soy sauce, cooking wine, pepper, minced ginger and a little white wine. Try adding other spices you like, then massage, wrap in plastic wrap, or place in a container and cover with plastic wrap. Chill the tenderloin in the refrigerator for two to three days to let it soak up the flavors of the dressing. After marinating, take it out and put it on a plate, pour a little wine and a little oil, and steam it in a pan. To what extent is it steamed? It’s fine if you can easily poke it in with chopsticks (it’s okay to have a little pink inside). Slice after cooling. It’s really delicious. You can have porridge for breakfast and wine for dinner.

Fried Minced Pork with Pickled Vegetables

Different kinds of pickles are delicious when fried with minced meat.

The meat filling must be mixed with starch and water. Many people like to add egg whites, but I don’t like it very much. Whether it is making meatballs or minced meat, if you want to have a good taste, you must grasp the ratio of starch and water. Be patient, add water in small amounts and mix it slowly, so that the taste of the finished product will be delicate. When frying, put one or two long peppers, which can enhance the flavor, and you can also add fermented soybeans or natto, which are very fragrant when fried together.

dried fruit syrup

I have “10,000” recipes for boiling sugar water, because it can be matched at will.

Prepare some dried fruits, such as dried figs, dried plums, dried pears, dried peaches, etc., as well as ingredients such as osmanthus that can add fragrance. You can cook different dried fruits together, or you can cut a little fresh fruit into it. The key is to put a little dried fruit soaked in wine when cooking, the flavor will be very layered. Remember not to cook for a long time after adding the wine-stained dried fruit, the alcohol will evaporate and the aroma will be weakened.

Rum-pickled raisins or other dried fruit can be used. Liquor, such as Wuliangye, is also a good ingredient. Dried strawberries soaked in Wuliangye taste very good.

Sweet Potato Dim Sum

The sweet potatoes in Beijing are especially good. Steam the sweet potatoes, peel them, put a little cream, mash them, and then they can be free to play. You can add various ingredients, such as raisins, pistachios, hazelnuts, cashew nuts, etc., form small balls one by one, and brush the surface with a layer of oil-grapeseed oil, olive oil or other oils are fine, I tend to use butter , a little more fragrant. Put the sweet potato balls into the oven and bake until the surface is a little golden, take it out and sprinkle some sesame seeds. For a better look, you can cut a small piece of fruit and put it on top. This kind of Chinese dim sum is very delicious, not greasy, and very healthy.

sweet dumpling

I am a southerner, and I especially like glutinous rice balls. I summed up a recipe of glutinous rice balls to share with you. Finely sieve the glutinous rice flour, mix half of the boiling water and half of the cold water, and add to the glutinous rice flour. Knead into a smooth dough, then knead into long strips and cut into small pieces. Stir-fry the black sesame seeds, add raisins, peanuts, macadamia nuts and brown sugar, smash them together, chop the ham into fine cubes, and add half a piece of butter. Mix these ingredients well, put them in the refrigerator for half an hour, take them out after shaping and knead them into small balls, and then wrap them.

In fact, the cooking method of glutinous rice balls is not only boiled, but also can be baked in the oven. The baked ones are more delicious than the boiled ones. You may wish to give it a try. I once ate a glutinous rice ball in a French restaurant, which was also baked and sprinkled with various grated cheeses. It was delicious and I felt very happy. I had a feeling of sympathy with the chef.

Bad bittern

In summer, there is a plate of “bad everything” on the table, which feels very refreshing and appetizing.

The advantage of making your own marinade is that the taste can be adjusted. Add some plums and sweet-scented osmanthus, and the aroma of the wine will be more layered. The bad marinade bought is often too salty. If you make it yourself, you can reduce the amount of salt appropriately, make it lighter, and eat a large plate more easily.

Bad shrimp, bad chicken wings, bad chicken legs, bad chicken feet, bad pork belly, bad hairtail… really everything can be bad, the specific method is:

1. Cook the ingredients separately. You can add sliced ​​ginger and a little pepper when cooking. Chicken wings are cooked for about fifteen minutes, chicken legs for twenty minutes, and shrimp for less than two minutes.

2. Put the cooked ingredients in ice water for a while, the taste will be more elastic, of course, it is also possible to simply let it cool.

3. Pour the marinade that was made or bought before, and the juice should cover the ingredients. Then seal the mouth of the bowl with plastic wrap, or seal it in a glass container with a lid, and put it in the refrigerator overnight (if it is bad edamame, soak it for two hours).

Take it out and put it on a plate half an hour before eating, let the ingredients warm up, and you can start eating.

It is most convenient to buy ready-made bad marinade. If you have free time and want to try to make bad marinade by yourself, you can refer to this recipe: water, Huadiao wine (I will also put a little white wine), soy sauce, pepper, star anise, ginger slices, Onion, salt, sugar, fermented rice wine, dried plum, tangerine peel, mix and boil, then let cool. As for the dosage, Chinese food is often based on experience and feeling, so there is no fixed number of grams, just adjust the ratio according to your own taste.

Strawberry Yogurt

When it is too hot, I always want to eat something cold. I will make a strawberry yogurt summer drink to satisfy my craving.

Add fresh strawberries to viscous old yogurt, and a spoonful of honey, and put it in a blender to make a smoothie. Shake a cattail fan and read two pages of books, it will be a happy moment in the hot summer.

Ginger fried duck or camphor tea duck?

I bought a piece of duck breast at the market. I wanted to have a pan-fried duck breast with the taste of sweet and sour oranges in French cuisine. Then I asked Mr. Wen and Nuowuo, two long-time diners in my cafeteria, what kind of duck they wanted to eat.

My own mind is of the ginger-sautéed duck my grandma used to make every summer when I was a kid . The husband said that he remembered a delicious camphor tea duck that he had eaten once . Nuonuo loves roast duck, and is fascinated by the crispy aroma of the duck skin.

So, I put it together in my head. The method is that I create based on my feelings, write it down and share it with everyone.

Because of the lack of the step of smoking, it cannot be called camphor tea duck, but the method is similar, and the frying is replaced by roasting. I think it would be delicious to use this recipe instead of duck legs.

Use a knife to draw patterns on the surface of the duck skin, add sea salt, minced garlic, add a little thyme, a little wine, and marinate overnight in the refrigerator. This is similar to the practice of confit duck legs.

The next morning, first boil a pot of green onion and ginger water, bring to a boil, put the duck meat down and scald it for a minute or two. This step is quite important, otherwise it will be easily deformed when it is marinated later. Heat well and remove.

Add a little oil to the pan, fry the blanched duck breast slowly until the skin changes color, and most of the fat in the duck skin comes out. Add scallions, ginger and garlic, and the white scallions can be a little more, and fry with duck meat over low heat.

It is best if you have the energy to fry some sugar color in a small wok by the side at this time. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have it. But I am more resistant to using dark soy sauce for coloring (many contain pigments), rather the color is not beautiful enough.

Make sure that the duck meat is fried until it is very fragrant and the duck skin is beautiful, then you can put boiling water in the pot (you can also use the ginger and onion water that has just blanched the duck), and the water should cover the duck meat. Add bay leaf, star anise, grass fruit, cardamom, dried chili, peppercorns, tangerine peel, rice wine, rock sugar and soy sauce. Please adjust the proportion of brine according to your own taste.

After the brine boils, turn off the minimum fire, and then you can do other things. A well-sealed cast iron pot is more suitable for the brine step, and the brine will not lose too much.

Turn off the fire for about an hour and a half, and then let the duck sit in the brine until dinner.

It’s almost dinner time, take out the duck meat, brush a thin layer of honey on the duck skin, put it in the oven at 200 degrees, and bake for ten minutes. Every oven has a different temper. The crispy skin prevails. Don’t walk away when doing this step for the first time. It’s easy to fall short and burn when you come back. You can take it out when you see the overall discoloration of the duck skin, squeak in the oven, and the duck meat becomes firm.

Put it on a plate, let it cool down, sprinkle some pepper powder on the surface, I also chopped a little thyme, or you can pour a little pepper oil and add brine.

Sliced ​​on the table, sliced ​​and disappeared, the two boys humiliated each other very hypocritically for the last bite, and did not forget to persuade me when they wiped their mouths, making one piece of duck breast is also doing it, and making four pieces is also doing it. Why just make one piece?
Thinking about it is also true, it makes sense.

treat it like art

Nowadays, many people think that it saves time to go out and eat ready-made food, but in fact, the time spent on the road, waiting for a table, ordering food, and even chatting during the dinner may be longer than cooking a meal at home.

Of course, you also need to feel when cooking. Don’t be discouraged when you make “dark dishes” at the beginning. You might as well try to cook a few more times to find the texture. Relatively speaking, Western food recipes are easier to learn because the ingredients are measured accurately and there will be specific weights, while Chinese food recipes often say “a little salt”, “a little vinegar” and “a little oil”. Such expressions may drive people crazy , but the bigger message behind it is that you can tweak it to your taste.

There are some great apps for learning how to cook these days. You will find that many people have cooked the same dish, each with their own methods and tricks. We will have a lot of references and guides, but no one recipe can replace your basic understanding of food, and you need to adjust it according to your own preferences to make the food satisfy your taste buds.

At this point, I think cooking is very similar to Chinese medicine prescribing medicine. Good doctors have their own experience in the selection and proportioning of medicinal materials, and they also need to adjust according to their understanding of the patient’s condition. Therefore, the same prescription may have completely different effects with different proportions of medicinal materials. The same is true for cooking, when frying a vegetable, you will find that the taste of one red pepper is different from that of two red peppers, whether the pepper is burnt or raw, the taste is different. When making boiled meat, the last layer of sesame seeds is very important. When the hot oil is poured on it, the degree of ripeness of the sesame seeds will determine the intensity and state of the aroma. When Sichuan people cook some dishes, they will stir-fry the seasoning first. If you want to have a good aroma, it is very important to use cold oil and low heat. If you stir-fry with high heat, the taste will be stifled. Another example is to make tea, we will pour hot water under the tea leaves, let it wrap the tea leaves from below, instead of pouring it directly from the top, so that the taste of the tea leaves will be released slowly, and each brew has a different aroma.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that food should be treated with the sensitivity of an artist and the curiosity of a scientist. Fireworks should not be underestimated, a small daily matter, put your own talent and ability into it, no matter whether it is rich or not, as long as the “just right” result is achieved, it is the joy of craftsmanship. The harmonious sound produced by the arrangement of different notes is pleasant, and the harmonious combination of different lines and colors is attractive. The ingenuity and talent of the cook also lies in being good at cooking an appropriate proportion, which is different from any The principles behind art are the same. As long as you have the heart and heart, you can taste it and do it.

when food is not abundant

Looking back on my own growth experience, I came to Beijing to study alone when I was very young, and gradually became self-reliant, worked, and started a family. During these processes, of course, I have encountered many difficulties and corresponding challenges to face, but in retrospect, I always feel very sweet. Thinking about it carefully, it’s probably because I focused on how to make every day better and do everything to make people happy.

I think this attitude does not lie in the abundance of material, but in whether we have a good appetite, interest and creativity. Just like a question I once received: What should I do if the ingredients are not so abundant, such as only a pack of instant noodles?

I really don’t have much experience with this. If it is non-fried noodles, it is easier to cook well, but no matter what it is, you might as well open the refrigerator first, there is always some food, a few eggs and a little seasoning. Pour some oil in a small pot, stir-fry the seasoning, cut the vegetables into cubes, add a little ginger, garlic, and soy sauce and burn it to make a braised topping. If there is still some meat, then you can fry a piece of meat, and then fry an egg… It is not easy to cook everything together. will be better. All kinds of noodles are boiled at the same heat, during which cold water should be added to the inside. Well-cooked noodles should not be soft and boneless, but should be elastic and smooth to eat.

I remember in the movie “Love in Zurich”, the young chef wants to cook dinner for the girl he likes, but the ingredients are only flour, half an orange, two eggs and mints. He spread his hands, but the girl said, life is like this, do what you have. So with those few simple things, he also made an exquisite noodle: seasoned with oranges, separated egg whites and yolks, fried them, roasted mint to melt and thinned, crushed and sprinkled on a plate for decoration. I put my heart into it, and I feel that if the stomach has eyes to see, it will be touched and smile.

Sometimes, being “good” doesn’t depend entirely on what we have on our hands. The ancients said “the broom is precious”, which means that if you cherish it, you will not be poor. What’s more, our choices are much richer and more refined than before. Whether it is cooking or eating, whether it is cooked or eaten well is all determined. Whether it is bad or delicious, just like we can make peppercorns more fragrant, it just depends on whether you want it or not.

From the perspective of caring for life, good things support our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind. Collecting and storing more happy and positive experiences for ourselves will make you live more smoothly in some difficult times.

It’s still the same principle: the total amount of unhappiness, challenges and difficulties that everyone has to experience in their life is similar. Some people seem to live happily, and there must be their own way. My own method is very simple, which is to live every day well, talk less about lofty aspirations and goals, but treat myself better, love myself more, live every moment with a higher quality, and do more for myself some goodies.