Food for lazy people

I tend to spend a fair chunk of my time at home cooking and doing the subsequent cleaning up. This is more because I'm inefficient, not because I'm a big gastrophile like my friend Nick. However, I do prefer to cook my own food when I can, even though it's only marginally cheaper than buying frozen prepackaged meals in this part of the world. That means I usually end up eating extremely un-fancy meals: usually rice with stir-fried veggies (always ALWAYS with garlic) and some kind of meat.

Whatever I cook has got to be straightforward and not take too much attention, not because I'm an incompetent cook - to quote Dr. Aiken, "If you can't cook you're not worth a damn as a biochemist" - but simply because I'm lazy. So, here are some quickie recipies for lazy people.

From me: pork souffle

1 large	egg
200g	ground pork
1 tsp	sesame oil
pinch (ok, 0.5g)	salt
1/8	large onion

Beat the egg in a bowl. Mix in the pork, sesame oil (for flavour; my mum puts it to add fat to the minced lean pork but seriously, you don't need it if you bought ground pork), and salt. Steam either on a metal rack placed over water in a covered wok, or if you're cooking rice, just chuck the bowl on top of the half-cooked rice. While it's steaming, chop the onion roughly (domestic violence!) and fry until brown. Sprinkle on top of pork/egg mixture. Mmm, porky, eggy, oniony comfort food.

From Angela: leche asada (translates loosely as "baked milk")

1 tin	condensed milk
1 small carton	heavy cream
1 tin volume (i.e. use the condensed milk tin)	regular milk
4	eggs

Mix everything together, pour into baking dish, bake at 425F for about 50 minutes. Makes a solid custard, quite sweet yet not too sugary.

An aside: Baked custard is super easy to make. It's the [misnamed] "boiled" variety that's so hard - you have to heat the pot very very gently - NOT boiled - otherwise the egg will coagulate instead of remaining suspended and cooking into a nice colloid. I always screw this up becuase I'm impatient.

From Aba: milk caramel - so easy it's almost idiotic

1 tin

condensed milk

Boil UNOPENED tin of condensed milk in a large saucepan full of water for 3 hours. Open tin, roll caramel into little balls.

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Lotta new things in my life this month...new house, new boyfriend, new school, new lab, new computer...new wok!

It came with instructions on several ways to season a wok - something that my mum's never done at home - and I'm fairly amazed at how well the process works, even though I just used the stovetop seasoning method. The bottom is pretty much as nonstick as Teflon. I've decided to stop using Teflon-coated frying pans due to my tendency to burn stuff (usually a combination of overenthusiasm and laziness). With a steel wok, if the oil coating burns, you can scrub off the black bits and reseason.

I'm really curious as to the chemistry behind this...the layer of "seasoning", whatever it is, is bonded pretty well to the surface. It doesn't come off with dilute dish detergent.

One old thing that's still with me is my good friend the Xenomorph (21st birthday present to self - 21st birthday was very lonely). He's taking up abseiling as a hobby.