Cooking For The Whole Week

 Weekend cooking  can be a pain but it pays off, especially if you are planning to have it for the entire week. Saturday and Sunday are perfect days  to make those frozen meals for week night dining. There's so much you can make for a full five busy days ahead.

Be ready when you want  to cook a lot.Make sure that the cutting board is clean and wiped down. Are the knives sharpened? Do you have the right ones? Are the pots , both for stove top or for the microwave also clean and ready? When the utensils and gadgets are ready then look at what you have? Jarred sauces and pasta make for good weeknight dinners. They both store and freeze easily. Have boxes of your favorite pasta along with lasagna sheets for cooking. Have both read and white pasta sauces to cook with to vary the upcoming agenda of meals.beans are a vital ingredient in soups and stews. Make sure you have the appropriate number of cans . Also have a variety too, Chickpeas are versatile and can be used in everything form soups to  curries. red kidney beans are another must. They add flavor to soups like minestrone. Do you have enough herbs and spices. Make sure there is enough garlic and onion powder along with oregano and rosemary. Do you have enough of the basic seasonings such a as sea salt and peppercorns that can be freshly ground? Most importantly  - do you have the storage containers ready to be filled and stored.

As for recipes, again a hearty pasta such as penne or bucatini work well with reheating. You can just cook the pasta and then let everyone microwave their own cup of sauce. for later eating. They can be cooked together too.Another dish that can last well into the next weekend isa bean stew. Add any kind of bean you like or a combo of them such as chickpeas and cannellini along with a veggie such as spinach . Tomato paste and vegetable broth give it a smooth texture.  Keep in mind that you can add chicken or beef to this along with stretching it out with rice. or quinoa.For easier cooking with this use your crockpot It allows you to to go about yoru Saturday chores and errands with only having to check in once or twice to see how it's cooking. A meat based stew even lets you make some dumplings for a more filling meal. These can be made either plain or with herbs for a tasty extra.Of  course soups are a good dish to make. They're easy to to store and easy to reheat in the microwave. Take advantage of the season's bounty. A good squash, cauliflower ro pumpkin soup is easy to whip up especially if you have a bof soup pot and an immersion blender.

It's so easy to devote a weekend for weeknight cooking.Decide what you want to make. Get the ingredients and cook. You;ll have delicious homemade meals for the week ahead,

Recipes From A Potato's Birthplace

We tend to think of potato recipes as being North American,cooked with a European influence.There's fries and scalloped style, mashed and latkes. yet there were recipes for them long before , in the tuber's birthplace - Peru. These have been around forever and are still an integral part of the area's cuisine.

It was a fascinating article along with recipes in today's New York Times Food section, Madhur Jaffrey, an award winning actress for her part in Shakespeare Wallah, and now a food writer wrote this after visiting Peru and observing the different potatoes grown there. They come in every color and texture, from reds, blues, and purples to yellows and pinks. What is really interesting is that the interior textures can change just by putting them out in the sun. This turns them softer and silkier. Their shapes vary, they're not those elongated , lumpy ovals. Some are shaped like a puma
's paw while other are in the form of an alpaca's nose or a cat's claw. There are new varieties being discovered all the time. There are even potato banks, that store seeds for 1,300 (!) varieties .Peruvian chefs are always on the hunt to find new strains , the more to experiment with along with new ,indigenous herbs and plants to cook them into. The potatoes are not the bland tasting ones we're used to. They even have their own aromas, smelling sometimes like funky bean curds or cheese.

Ms. Jaffrey got to try the potatoes in a variety of dishes. At the Sumaq Hotel in the quaint southern Peruvian town of Aguas Calientes where Machu Pichu is she samples a potato cake The  spuds are cut mandoline thin and layered with bacon and cheese. There is also Papa a la Huancaina, which many consider the country's national dish  Potatoes are boiled, sliced and put with sliced, hard boiled eggs on lettuce leaves . Olives spike up the dish and then dressed with a Huancaina sauce. This last has the native long pepper , aji amarillo. Huancaina sauce can easily be made here too, if you go to a South American grocery store. It contains the pepper along with garlic and onion blended with mozzarella and hard boiled eggs.. Ms. Jaffrey also includes a recipe for a Peruvian cheesy potato soup that has two kinds of potatoes, chufos , the dried variety and russets.if you can't find chufos, just add more of the other These's also celery , carrots and squash along with feta cheese.it's served with a dollop of uchucuta sauce which is a kind of salsa verde. Peanut butter and  more feta give it a smooth, creamy texture ,perfect for blending into individual bowls of soup.

Potatoes in their original dishes are not only a taste of history but a treat. Get away from the European influences and try them in a variety of Peruvian dishes. it's a great way to bring out their mild flavor and silky texture.