Sunday, May 27, 2007

Cooking for pleasure

I love food, and I love cooking for pleasure. I am always on the lookout for easy to do recipes that I can try on weekends. Nowadays, if I don't try cooking something new on a weekend, I feel a little disappointed; especially after I got a new microwave oven.
Microwave ovens are real cool things. They make cooking nice and fun, and owning one opens you to a completely new vista of dishes that you normally cannot do without one. Only last week I tried baking a couple of pizzas, and it came out pretty good for a first time. I could never try out things like pizzas and muffins without an oven. Besides being able to bake, you can really speed up your cooking when you microwave.
Now today is a typical sunday. I wake up and find that there is nothing for breakfast. Typical opportunity to notch up something nice. So, I decided to make a grilled sandwich variation today for breakfast.
Now there are some things that you must always have at home if you want to avoid the irritation of actually going down to the grocery shop when you want to cook something: potatoes, tomatoes, and onions are an absolute must. Even if you are not trying to do something fancy, these things are required almost everyday at home. Since I wanted to make sandwiches, I wanted bread, butter, cheese and capsicums. Thankfully my brother got these things for me while I did my initial chopping and frying. This is when I realized that one should always have butter and cheese at home (atleast I should).

I wanted sprouted moong dal, but there was no time for that. I checked my fridge and I luckily found boiled potatoes. Good. You always need some good binding agent when making sandwich. So, I peeled the potatoes, mashed them and put them in a wok. Added a dash of salt, red chilly powder, and a little oil. Then I fried this mixture for a while cos I don't like the raw smell of boiled potatoes.
I chopped the tomatoes, onions, and capsicum into small equal sized pieces. Added a dash of salt and pepper and microwaved them for 1 minute at 100% power. (Boy I really like the smell of those crisp capsicums when they are very slightly cooked.)
Next I applied some butter on a bread slice and spread some of my boiled potato mixture on it. Topped this with some of my tomato, capsicum, and onion mixture and sprinkled some grated cheese on it. Note that this is an open sandwich, in the sense that it is only a single slice of bread without one on the top of my stuffing (?) mixture.
Now this was ready to be grilled for about 10 minutes (or till the cheese melts). Boy, when the 10 minutes were over, and when I opened the door to the oven, I was greeted by an inviting smell of crispy capsicums and melted cheese. It turned out pretty good....crispy bread with a nice topping of veggies bound by the layer of mashed potatoes, topped by melted cheese.
Served with some ketchup and accompanied by some coke....a perfect start to a nice Sunday.

2 comments:

Nish said...

God is a cook?

champrules said...

bleh... i dont know how ppl enjoy cooking food... the most i can do with food is eat... :D