Notes from Stella's Kitchen
AND ABOUT COOKING IN GENERAL
The recipes I have included in this book are, for the most part, easy to prepare. Few take more than an hour, most only about three quarters of an hour. Don’t be put off by this, you will find as you try them that they result in excellent dishes.
Their ease in preparation stems from my having to spend much of the week in a government office. Thus, our evening meals have to be easy to prepare and over the years I have adapted my cooking to suit this weekday limitation. My secret is to keep them easy to prepare, but good to eat. According to the rather critical judge I have living with me, Paul, I have succeeded.
Meals on weekends are a little different. I can, on those days, spend more time doing what I really enjoy, puttering around the kitchen, trying different things and preparing more elaborate meals. As a result, the recipes I give in the book for these days take a little more preparation. But not much more.
From experience, I have found that good meals don’t have to be overly elaborate and I have modified the style of my cooking accordingly. For example, sauces. I believe that all too often recipes act as if the sauce is the recipe’s main ingredient and that the entrée is secondary. My philosophy is that a sauce is a garnish whose purpose is to enhance a dish’s flavor of, rather than smother any original taste it might have. The sauces I present in my recipes follow that philosophy.
(When Paul and I are in a restaurant that completely drowns the entrée with their “special” house sauce, we wish that they followed this philosophy as well.)
In all my recipes, I have tried to stick to the basic idea that if you start off with good food and be careful how you fix it, the results will be good meal. I’m no stranger to trying different things and different ways to make those things, but I always follow the cardinal rule of fresh food and real food should give you great dishes.
By this I mean using whenever possible fresh vegetables in season and fresh meat rather than frozen meat. I advocate that, when the recipe calls for certain ingredients, don’t use artificial substitutes; use real whipping cream not a canned artificial imitation; use real vanilla, not artificial vanilla; use butter, not oleo, etcetera. Of course, there are times and circumstances that may require a compromise, but in essence, stick with this simple rule of using fresh, real ingredients in your recipes.
Finally, and this is most important, I hope that you, like myself, enjoy cooking. Cooking is as entertaining to me as going to a good movie is to others. The recipes I have included in this book are recipes for meals that I enjoy making and that Paul and I enjoy eating. I hope you will as well.
Bon Appetit!
