Besides striving for safety and hygiene in the kitchen, my main objectives are to be practical and to keep it simple. Simple meals are the best.
I always keep hard squash in the refrigerator not only because it lasts longer than a lot of other more perishable vegetables; but it also gives me variety in color, texture and nutrients. Whenever you already have the oven on is a perfect time to put one in. Whole or halved or sliced, it doesn’t really matter. Roasting a chicken? I put a butternut squash and a kabocha in there at the same time. It could be part of dinner or repurposed for later.
Here’s an example of lunch the next day. After boiling the chicken carcass to make stock, I combined some with the butternut squash and pureed. Simple as that. Michael wanted to know what else was in this soup because it was so delicious. No other ingredients. You could add herbs or cream or any number of other things, but sometimes the simplest and quickest meals are the best…just like this chicken breast sandwich. He loves it with lettuce and mayonnaise. Could you put other goodies on it? Sure. But why do you need to? Simple, quality ingredients require very little embellishment.
After doing the same thing with the kabocha, I put some of that soup in the freezer. Later it reappeared as a sauce for pasta along with some ground turkey. At first I considered adding pumpkin pie style spices to it, but then I decided on fennel and fenugreek in addition to minced garlic. I bought some fenugreek a while back and then promptly forgot what I intended to do with it. So I have been having a fun moment experimenting with it. I like it for its sweet, warm character. Once again, only your imagination is the limit. Especially if you begin with a basic preparation for the first time you serve something, you have so much versatility to completely reinvent it in the future.
What have you been experimenting with in the kitchen? How do keep things simple? For more simple meals as you develop your intuition in the kitchen, read this next.