Being Brave in the Kitchen: how I learned to cook outside the box

The other day I made a huge vat of venison potato soup with random things in my pantry and fridge that were in desperate need of being used up. I didn't follow any recipe really; I just used the basic building blocks of soup making that I've learned over the years.

I haven't always been able to do this. In high school I worked every afternoon at our local library, which meant that I didn't have any opportunities to cook along with my mom like my sister did. I don't begrudge this, but it did delay my abilities somewhat. In college I began cooking for myself a lot during  my junior year when I was in a college apartment and realized how much money I could save by not using a meal plan. (Plus my introverted self just couldn't stand that cafeteria any longer.) Most of my meals were cooked by obediently following a recipe and I used a lot of convenience food shortcuts due to my crazy busy schedule.

When Ben and I got married I really started to branch out with my cooking. The more I learned about avoiding processed foods, the more I was pushed to stretch my skills and try new things. Ben's cooking style also has encouraged me to add my own spin to recipes instead of just following the recipe to the letter. He loves cooking without recipes, and just kind of knows what will work together.

We started watching Jamie at Home on BBCA a couple years ago. In this series Jamie Oliver cooks from his kitchen garden and each episode is centered around one star ingredient. Watching him cook has changed the way I cook. I have learned so much from his cooking shows about how to mix flavors and what ingredients go together well. Recently his series 30 Minute Meals was also on BBCA and I felt like that series gave me a whole new set of quick cooking skills. One of the best things I've learned from Jamie is to not be fussy about measuring, especially spices. If I have a recipe that I'm using I just eyeball the spice measurements and then adjust everything to taste as I go.

The other huge influence on my cooking has been Aimée of SimpleBites. I have been a faithful reader since the inception of her blog and I realized recently that reading her blog is what has taught me how to be brave in the kitchen and try new things like making soup without a recipe. What I realized was that even though I might not make all of the recipes that come through my inbox, reading all of them has given me a working knowledge of flavor and ingredient combinations. So now on a random weekday when I look in my cupboard to find 8 pounds of potatoes in need of using, I can easily throw together a delicious soup using nothing but things in my pantry and the wisdom I've learned from my cooking mentors over the years.

Being brave in the kitchen doesn't always have to mean cooking without a recipe. It is having the know-how to tweak a recipe on the fly when you've run out of an ingredient. It's being able to google kneading and teach yourself bread making. It's the ability to add your own delicious twist to a recipe to make it truly your own. And sometimes, it's making a huge pot of venison potato soup from scratch with no recipe whatsoever.

Pantry Challenge!

The Pantry Challenge is hosted by Good (Cheap) Eats a couple times a year. The goal is to "eat down your pantry" to use up forgotten ingredients, rotate your stock, and reduce grocery costs for a month.

I read about the Pantry Challenge a couple days into the month, but was already unintentionally meal planning out of the pantry so it was easy to jump right in! I had already started with some "leftover" meals from my Christmas week meal plan, so meal planning last week was fairly easy. We eat light breakfasts and for lunches we mainly do leftovers, so dinner has been my primary "eat down the pantry" focus. Before I started meal planning, however, I took an inventory of my pantry, fridge, and two freezers to see what we need to be using up during this challenge.

Some items in my freezer were no surprise at all. Ben still has a mallard in there waiting to go to the taxidermist. There was a bag of Very Old fish that got thrown in the trash finally. There are a lot of green beans from our garden. (Does anyone have clever ways of preparing green beans? I've run out of ideas.) And then there were a few thing in there that I didn't expect, like the fact that we have four (yes FOUR!) turkeys in our freezer! I knew we had three, but the fourth has magically appeared out of thin air. So we will be roasting a few birds this month, to say the least. Then there was a bag of... something. Ham, maybe? It's on the list as Mystery Meat, a tribute to the days before I started labeling my frozen goods. Suffice to say, our freezer is full and we may even carry the Pantry Challenge over into February just for good measure.

So far we've had homemade barbeque chicken pizza with cheese sticks, Rustic Chickpea Stew with brown rice, mango curry chicken salad, ham sandwiches on homemade wheat bread, and Strawberries and Cream Stuffed French Toast. Our grocery bill for the last two weeks was about half of what it normally is, so our Pantry Challenge is working great so far!

The Strawberries and Cream Stuffed French Toast turned out fantastic! I decided to make it after noticing that I had cream cheese in the fridge, and strawberries and a loaf of sweet currant bread in the freezer. I pulled out an old index card recipe and tweaked it to use what I had around. Here's what I came up with!

Strawberries and Cream Stuffed French Toast

about one loaf firm bread, cut into 1 in pieces (I used currant bread and some homemade whole wheat bread)
8 oz cream cheese, cubed
12 oz strawberries, quartered

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

8 eggs, beaten
2 cups milk
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla or almond extract

Butter a 9x13 inch pan and spread about half of the bread pieces on the bottom. Distribute the cream cheese evenly over the bread and layer the strawberries on top. Sprinkle the brown sugar over the berries and then add the remaining bread as the top layer. Mix together eggs, milk, syrup, cinnamon, and vanilla and pour over bread. Refrigerate, covered, for at least an hour or overnight. Bake at 375 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Serve with syrup and whip cream if desired.

Garden Fresh Pasta Sauce

A quick recipe for your enjoyment. Ben and I improvised this as we cooked and ended up with a fabulous final product. This is a great easy way to use up some of the surplus of tomatoes that you may have this summer! The measurements I have included are approximate since we were tossing things in as we went. Just adjust to the taste and texture you like.

2-3 T Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 T Red Wine Vinegar
1 T Butter
2 cloves Garlic, minced
2 - 4 cups baby bella mushrooms, sliced thick (amount used depends on how much you like mushrooms!)
6-8 large tomatoes or 10-14 small tomatoes, chunked
1 small handful fresh basil, chopped
1 small red chili, minced
salt and pepper to taste
1 - 2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 - 2 tsp dried marjoram (sub in fresh if you have it!)
1 8oz can tomato paste

In a large skillet or sauce pan heat up a couple tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Add red wine vinegar, butter, and minced garlic.
Toss in baby bella mushrooms. Add more EVOO if needed. Saute on high for a few minutes until they show some color and soften a bit.
Add in tomatoes, making sure to include juices. We chunked our tomatoes right over the pan so as to keep all those juices in the sauce.
Add basil, red chili, marjoram, red pepper, salt and pepper. Gently boil at med-high heat 5 - 10 minutes until the juices start to concentrate.
Add can of tomato paste to thicken sauce. Simmer for another few minutes to bring the sauce together and thicken to desired consistency. Check spices and add more as desired.
Serve over al dente spaghetti or other pasta of choice.