We’ve not had pilaff for years and I, personally, haven’t made it for probably 40 years. It just faded out of my repertoire and never made it back. A lot of things are like that. At any one time I probably only use about half a dozen recipes, with a few variations to ensure we don’t eat the same thing too often.
We tend to eat a similar menu most weeks, with just a gradual change as the seasons move on. I have just started cooking quiches again now that summer is here, and vegetable stew has disappeared from the menu as root vegetables don’t seem so appealing in summer. We did have carrot in the coleslaw we had with the quiche earlier in the week, but that’s about it.
I’ve been looking up pilaff recipes today, as they seem to be a useful way of making a rice dish that uses stuff up. It’s a bit like Chinese rice, but over the years I’ve finally begun to get bored with it.
One of the recipes involved exotic mushrooms, dried mushrooms and mushroom powder. Another involved whatever mushrooms you had to hand and a stock cube. Guess which one we are trying next week?
Malta
Part of the problem is that every time I try something new, I fail to adopt it, even if it is nice. It’s much easier just to go into autopilot and make the same old thing, or a version of it, rather than doing something new.
Yes, I did make Chestnut and Mushroom Pie, and enjoyed it, but it involves dried mushrooms and chestnut which I don’t normally have in the cupboard. And the Woolton Pie was good, but the stew version is easier.
I really should try to do better.
But then, I should try to improve my blogging and poetry writing too. They are both more interesting than filling quiches and steeping dried mushrooms.
Cactus hedge Malta
Fresh brown button mushrooms are an old standby here.
My mushroom of choice. I can’t see many people having shitakes about, and dried and powdered.
I notice a little world weariness creeping into this post.
It is possible . . .
When you are tired of Chinese Rice, you are tired of life. Next week I will try better.
We do the same thing here with cooking. We tend to rely on the tried and true. Between general busyness and creaky knees, that seems to be what I can manage. However, from time to time I try something new and it often makes its into our regular rotation.
One of my problems is my tendency to select my (online) shopping from “Favourites”. Could be worse, I’m told a lot of people just order the same thing every week and this can lead to problems in the long term.
Am I such a simple man that you didn’t for a moment think, I bet he’s going for the one with all the expensive mushrooms? Ah well . . . 🙂
The mushrooms were not hard to guess. You can put anything you like in that rice