Shotglass Recipes
Jul. 8th, 2019 06:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsMy last post was my recipe for Chicken with Balsamic Fig Sauce, Wild Rice, and a Vegetable, and there's something a little odd about it: the only measuring device you use is a shot glass.
A shot glass is three tablespoons. Because it's angled a bit like a funnel, the first tablespoon fills it almost halfway, the second higher, and the third tablespoon is just the last quarter-inch or so.
The recipes you get from the box stores are ridiculous: "exactly a quarter ounce of this, exactly two ounces of that." When you're reading a cookbook, oftentimes it'll be "two teaspoons of this." I even have one measuring spoon that reads "a pinch." Unless you're making candy or baking (and not even with baking sometimes!), that kind of precision is completely unnecessary.
You're supposed to play with the flavors. This recipe is a dream for playing: it has sweet (the jam), it has acid (the balsamic vinegar), it has salt and bitter (the dijon mustard, plus the salt & pepper you added), it has heat from the stove, and it has fat from the butter, oil, and chicken. You can shift these a little bit in any direction and see what happens: skip the butter in the rice, add more vinegar, use apple cider vinegar and apple butter. Skip the salt in the rice but try soy sauce afterward.
Using shot glasses and asking you to eyeball the "a little more than half-high" for the balmasic vinegar is meant to make you feel confident: it doesn't really matter how exact you are, you can't screw that recipe up unless you burn something, and that's what all the timers are for.
I have all the bells and whistles, it's true: I have both a sous-vide cooker and a pressure cooker, and I love using them. But you don't need them to cook a good meal. You just need to learn that some things mix together just fine and get used to mixing them in ratios that you and your loved ones enjoy. This recipe is unusual in that you really can go from walk-in-the-door to sit-at-the-table in 30 minutes, and clean up is fairly minimal. But it's a fantastic starter recipe, and you should feel safe branching out from here.
A shot glass is three tablespoons. Because it's angled a bit like a funnel, the first tablespoon fills it almost halfway, the second higher, and the third tablespoon is just the last quarter-inch or so.
The recipes you get from the box stores are ridiculous: "exactly a quarter ounce of this, exactly two ounces of that." When you're reading a cookbook, oftentimes it'll be "two teaspoons of this." I even have one measuring spoon that reads "a pinch." Unless you're making candy or baking (and not even with baking sometimes!), that kind of precision is completely unnecessary.
You're supposed to play with the flavors. This recipe is a dream for playing: it has sweet (the jam), it has acid (the balsamic vinegar), it has salt and bitter (the dijon mustard, plus the salt & pepper you added), it has heat from the stove, and it has fat from the butter, oil, and chicken. You can shift these a little bit in any direction and see what happens: skip the butter in the rice, add more vinegar, use apple cider vinegar and apple butter. Skip the salt in the rice but try soy sauce afterward.
Using shot glasses and asking you to eyeball the "a little more than half-high" for the balmasic vinegar is meant to make you feel confident: it doesn't really matter how exact you are, you can't screw that recipe up unless you burn something, and that's what all the timers are for.
I have all the bells and whistles, it's true: I have both a sous-vide cooker and a pressure cooker, and I love using them. But you don't need them to cook a good meal. You just need to learn that some things mix together just fine and get used to mixing them in ratios that you and your loved ones enjoy. This recipe is unusual in that you really can go from walk-in-the-door to sit-at-the-table in 30 minutes, and clean up is fairly minimal. But it's a fantastic starter recipe, and you should feel safe branching out from here.
