3. There is one major exception, which Phil would insist on me pointing out: alcohol, which contains “empty” kilojoules, encourages additional consumption of food and more alcohol, and discourages exercise, as well as being (convincingly) associated with numerous diseases. I recommend not drinking alcohol1.
4. Regular exercise is important. If you are motivated by quantified goals, I recommend use of a smart watch to monitor exercise (you should already have one for timing cooking activities). It represents vastly better value for money than a prestigious watch with useless “features” (appropriately named complications), such as tourbillons.
5. Weigh your body daily. This advice is contrary to conventional wisdom, which mistakenly argues that daily variations can be eliminated by less frequent weighing. It is better to take frequent, regular readings at the same time of day, store them in your monitoring device (see 4), and allow it to create a curve of best fit to show progress.
The rouille is a major factor in the deliciousness of this meal but is incompatible with wine. I suggest an Americano with an optional absinthe (or pastis, such as Pernod or Ricard) rinse: put 10 ml of absinthe in serving glass, tilt to partially coat interior of glass, transfer to next glass until all glasses prepared; drink any remaining. Then make a conventional Americano in those glasses: stir 30 ml of sweet vermouth and 30 ml of Campari with ice; top with 30 ml of soda; garnish with orange slice1. Or don’t drink alcohol at all.
You will have achieved a low-alcohol or no-alcohol Saturday night2, which you should not notice due to being distracted by the quality of the meal and the work of extracting seafood from shells. Avoiding alcohol is likely to have more weight-loss benefits than eating seafood.
COMMON RESOURCES: SEAFOOD STEW
1 can tomatoes, 400 g
2 cloves garlic
1 brown onion
RECIPE-SPECIFIC INGREDIENTS: SEAFOOD STEW
This recipe is intended to produce leftovers.
750 g live mussels
12 large raw (“green”) prawns (shrimp), shelled (tail may still be attached)
1 small calamari, cleaned by fishmonger
6 sea scallops or 12 smaller scallops
1 fillet (250 g) firm fish, as recommended by fishmonger for stew or soup
1 hot or mild (smoked) chorizo sausage
1 small fennel bulb
COMMON RESOURCES: RUSTIC ROUILLE
1 egg (use yolk only)
8 cloves garlic (this is correct)
2 tsp of peppercorns (white or black)
1 slice bread leftover from lunch, crust removed
2 birds-eye or alternative preferred chilies, fresh or reconstituted
EQUIPMENT
Enameled cast-iron pot
Medium bowls
Mortar and pestle
Ladle
PROCESS
Time: 80 minutes, including significant unallocated time.
0: Slice calamari into thin (1 cm or less) rings.
Remove skin from chorizo and slice chorizo into 1 1/2 cm discs.
Put 2 tablespoons of olive oil in pot and heat on burner / hotplate (25% of maximum setting).
2: Fry chorizo slices. If they begin to blacken, turn them over immediately and reduce heat.
In parallel with the frying processes, peel onion, and chop onion and fennel bulb into 2 cm cubes.
5: Turn over chorizo slices with spatula, if you haven’t already. If they begin to blacken, go immediately to next step.
8: Use spatula to transfer chorizo to bowl, leaving oil from the chorizo in pot, and increase temperature to 80% of maximum.
10: Fry prawns and calamari.
11: Turn over prawns and calamari with spatula.
12: Reduce temperature to 20% of maximum. Use spatula to transfer prawns and calamari to bowl.
Add onions and fennel to pot. Stir with wooden spoon every 10 minutes.
While onions and fennel are cooking, prepare the rouille:
Put all rouille ingredients except the egg in the mortar, and use the pestle to crush and mix them into a homogenous paste (3 minutes). Alternatively, use the food processor.
Separate egg yolk from white and add yolk to mortar.
Slowly (initially drip by drip1) add olive oil to the pestle, stirring rapidly and continuously with a fork, until the mixture thickens to the consistency of mayonnaise, which it is. If it fails to thicken or stops thickening, you will need to perform the oil–egg-emulsion rescue procedure: put another egg yolk in a bowl and add the mixture in the same manner as you should have added the olive oil. You will have another egg white for a cocktail to assist in dealing with the stress of the near-disaster.
Enjoy unallocated time.
60 (non-critical): Increase temperature to 50% of maximum.
Cut fish into 2 cm cubes. Smell bag of mussels to check for decay (unlikely, but one bad mussel will render the entire meal inedible; smell mussels individually to identify the culprit and remove). Pull “beards” off mussels.
65: Add tomatoes and mussels to pot. Put lid on pot.
70: Remove lid, add contents of bowl and all remaining seafood to pot, and stir contents. Replace lid.
75: Remove lid. If less than 80% of mussels have opened, stir and keep cooking for 5 minutes or until the 80% target is reached.
Using ladle, transfer 1/3 of the stew to the bowl. Cover and refrigerate.
Serve the remaining 2/3 of the stew in the pot. Diners should add rouille (carefully) to their individual servings. Refrigerate leftover rouille.
VARIATIONS
The chorizo is optional but delicious.
The seafood items can be varied to include other bivalves and crustaceans, even to the extent of eliminating the fish.
Convert the stew to a soup by adding 500 ml of commercial fish or shellfish stock with the tomatoes. I recommend deleting the chorizo if you do this. Leave the liquid behind when removing the portion for refrigeration.
If you decide to have a first course (the cooking smells may stimulate hunger), take 1/3 of the prawns, scallops, or calamari, plus 6 slices of chorizo (1 cm each), and fry on the barbecue or in a pan. Their absence from the stew will not be noticed.
AUTUMN SUNDAY:
Don’s Surprise; Ice-cream
Common Resource Maintenance and Advance Preparation:
Chili con Carne (if necessary)
Chicken Stock (if necessary) – refer Summer Sunday for recipe
This day had three major problems.
1. On the occasions when I prepared a batch of chili con carne (for freezing and use on Fridays), it smelled so delicious that Rosie and Hudson insisted on eating a portion of it instead of the standard calf-liver-based meal. Even if we had eaten chili two days earlier.
2. When I was not preparing chili, the calf-liver meal was not conducive to concurrent family discussions, due to speed of preparation – and possibly cooking smells.
3. Rosie and Hudson were strongly encouraging me to change this meal.
More generally, the Standardized Meal System needed a process for evolution.
My solution was the non-standard Autumn Sunday. If I am not making chili, I trial a new recipe, based on research, vendor recommendations, or experience in restaurants and friends’ homes, sourcing the Recipe-specific Ingredients during my Saturday shopping. In this way I test at least ten new recipes per year, enabling (theoretically) a 36% annual replacement rate.
The dessert is deliberately “indulgent” and trivially easy (“serve ice-cream”), as compensation in the event that the experimental meal is “challenging” to prepare or consume. For the same reason, you may want to serve a familiar pre-dinner cocktail, which can be justified given the reduced alcohol consumption on Saturday. I suggest an Old Fashioned.
COMMON RESOURCE MAINTENANCE: CHILI CON CARNE
The chili con carne recipe makes four double meals (eight serves). It includes zucchini and corn, which are inauthentic1 but delicious and healthy.
COMMON RESOURCES
> 4 tbsp chili con carne spice mix (commercial product, but preferably from specialist spice vendor)
Hot paprika / cayenne pepper
4 cans tomatoes, 400g each
4 cans red kidney beans, 400g each
1 can sweet-corn kernels, 400 g
2 brown onions
RECIPE-SPECIFIC INGREDIENTS
2 red capsicums
400 g zucchini
500 g minced beef
EQUIPMENT
Large enameled cast-iron pot
Bowl
Freezer containers to store meals
PROCESS
Time: approximately 120 minutes elapsed, but less than 15 minutes work.
Remove beef from refrigerator 30 minutes before next step.
Chop onions into 1 cm cubes.
Chop zucchinis lengthwise into quarters, then cut crossways into pieces 1 cm thick.
Cut capsicums in half, remove cores, and cut into 1 cm squares.
Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in pot on burner / hotplate at 75% of maximum temperature.
Add onions, zucchini, and capsicum, and cook for 8 minutes, stirring every minute with spatula, then transfer to bowl.
Increase heat to maximum and add to pot 1/2 a tablespoon of oil, beef, and chili-spice mix. Cook until meat is uniformly brown (4 minutes), stirring every minute with spatula, breaking up any large clusters of mince.
Drain and dispose of liquid from beans and corn.
Add contents of the bowl and the canned products, and reduce heat to simmer.
After 30 minutes, taste, and progressively add hot pepper (1 teaspoon at a time) to achieve desired level of spice heat.
Continue cooking for between 15 and 90 minutes – non-critical, but the cooking smells are extremely enjoyable.
Serve and eat. Freeze leftovers in meal-size quantities.
VARIATIONS
Interestingly, given the name means “chili with meat”, the amount of meat per serve in chili con carne is relatively small and can be reduced further, even to zero, with surprisingly little negative impact on flavor and some positive impact on the number of cow deaths1 for which you are responsible.
Experiment with the quantity of chili powder, noting advice provided by the vendor.
Add 1 tablespoon of sweet smoked paprika to the spice mix. Obviously, the makers have undertaken considerable research and experimentation to achieve the optimum formula, so this is a personal-taste anomaly, but one which you may share.
AUTUMN MONDAY:
Linguini Marinara
Tonight’s meal is trivially simple: leftover (“reserved”) seafood stew from Saturday reheated and added to linguini.
If you want to add a starter (as I would), I recommend a selection of vegetables cut into slices 1 cm thick (length according to original size of vegetable), grilled on the barbecue and sprinkled with olive oil: vegetable antipasto, consistent with the Italian theme.
COMMON RESOURCES
Leftover seafood stew
160 g linguini
EQUIPMENT
Pot for reheating seafood stew
Pot for cooking linguini
PROCESS
Reheat the seafood over burner at 40% of maximum, with lid on pot. Stir every 5 minutes.
Prepare the linguini as recommended on the packet (add 1 tablespoon of salt when the water boils if not specified), drain, and mix with the reheated seafood.
Serve and put leftover rustic rouille on table to allow diners to stir in whatever quantity they want.
AUTUMN TUESDAY:
Tuna Sashimi; Thai Duck / Chicken Salad
Guest night. Quantity for four people.
Recommended cocktail: margarita or generic sour.
Recommended wine: white with some sweetness to balance the chili1 (e.g. pinot gris or gewürztraminer). Or beer.
A margarita is an excellent accompaniment to sashimi, since it contains citrus juice, but any cocktail of the sour family will satisfy this requirement. A sour consists of a base spirit, lemon or lime juice, and a sweetener. Various other flavorings can be added. Vast numbers are published and popular, including the daiquiri (rum), white lady (gin), and whisk(e)y sour (whisk(e)y).
Rather than fill space with minor variations, I have documented the Don Tillman Sour Generator (version for home use only, by persons of legal drinking age):
1. Select base liquor from vodka, gin, tequila, mezcal, white rum, cachaça, any whisk(e)y, dark rum, brandy, pisco, sherry (less alcoholic, less conventional).
2. Select lemon or lime juice.
3. Select sweetener from simple syrup2, triple sec (e.g. Cointreau), agave syrup (with tequila or mezcal), maple syrup (possibility with whisk(e)y). Sugar can be used directly (e.g. in a caipirinha) but it must be dissolved in the citrus juice.
4. Select optional supplementary ingredient (any liqueur or fortified wine or even unfortified wine, vermouth or sherry, Campari, orgeat (almond) syrup, bitters of any kind).
5. Select optional garnish (slice or rind of fruit, maraschino cherry, sprig of mint or another herb).
The formula can be varied, but a starting point is: put 60 ml base liquor, 30 ml juice, 30 ml sweetener, 15 ml supplementary ingredient (two dashes for bitters) in a shaker 1/3 filled with ice. If you want a frothy result, add an egg white. Shake vigorously for at least 45 seconds. Pour. Garnish with garnish. If you want a longer drink, add soda (in which case, don’t use egg white).
Document recipe, assess critically, and consider changes to ingredients and amounts. If the cocktail is a success, name it the
Base liquor Noun phrase
Vodka Caprioska
Gin Lady
Tequila Margarita
Mezcal Mezcalita
White rum Daiquiri
Cachaça Caipirinha
Whisk(e)y Whisk(e)y sour
Dark rum Rum sour
Brandy Sidecar
Pisco Pisco sour
Sherry Sherry1 sour
The sashimi is trivially easy, but guests are often impressed that you prepare raw fish at home. You should reassure them (with well-researched confidence) that you purchase it from a reliable fishmonger.
Occasionally I have had problems sourcing the sashimi-grade yellowfin (ahi) tuna or the green mangoes. Other forms of tuna, yellowtail (hamachi), or salmon (obviously also “sashimi-grade”) can be substituted for the yellowfin. If no suitable fish is available, I suggest purchasing raw (“green”) prawns (shrimp) or sea scallops and barbecuing them – simple and delicious.
The green mango can be replaced by green papaya or ripe mango (in the latter case, cut into 1 1/2 cm cubes rather than strips).
COMMON RESOURCES: SASHIMI
Soy sauce
Prepared wasabi (typically sold in tube)
RECIPE-SPECIFIC INGREDIENTS: SASHIMI
1 thick slice “sashimi-grade” yellowfin tuna (200 g)
COMMON RESOURCES: THAI DUCK SALAD
100 g tamari almonds (or non-tamari almonds, cashews, or peanuts)
For dressing:
1 tbsp tahini
Limes (for juice)
2 tsp maple syrup
80 ml soy sauce
1 birds-eye or alternative preferred chili, fresh or reconstituted (optional)
RECIPE-SPECIFIC INGREDIENTS: THAI DUCK SALAD
700 g duck fillets
250 g zucchini
1 red capsicum
1 yellow capsicum
1 long green chili
1 bunch spring onions
2 green mangoes
1/2 packet bean shoots
1 bunch coriander
EQUIPMENT
Bowl
Serving plates for sashimi and salad
Small bowls / plates for serving soy sauce and wasabi (preferably 1 per person)
Jar for mixing dressing
Meat thermometer
PROCESS
Time: 55 minutes, including time to greet guests and make cocktails.
Preferably before guests arrive, prepare salad:
Squeeze limes to produce 40 ml of juice. Put juice in jar with other dressing ingredients and shake to amalgamate.
Cut capsicums, zucchini, and long chili into 1 cm strips. Halve strips as necessary to achieve a more consistent length. Put in bowl with bean shoots.
Tear the coriander leaves from their stalks and add to bowl.
Chop chili into tiny pieces (30 seconds) and edible part of spring onions into 3 mm discs, and add both to bowl.
Take enough salad to fill 2 rice-paper rolls, put in a container, and refrigerate.
Peel green mango / green papaya using a vegetable peeler and cut into thin strips to match the zucchini strips. (If using a ripe mango, slice into 4 “cheeks” around the stone; use a knife to mark out 1 cm cubes, cutting from the flesh side but not into the skin – a crisscross pattern; turn cheeks inside out; cut away cubes from skin.)
Add mango and the nuts to the bowl containing the chopped / sliced vegetables.
Fifteen minutes before guests are due1:
Activate barbecue (indirect heat, lid on).
When barbecue reaches 180 degrees, put poultry on barbecue, skin side down, for 5 minutes.
When timer sounds, turn poultry over and set timer for 15 minutes.
Slice sashimi into the thinnest possible intact slices, observing the general carving rule to cut across the grain. Arrange on serving plate. Put 30 ml of soy sauce and 1 teaspoon of wasabi in each small bowl.
When guests arrive, make cocktails and serve sashimi (traditionally eaten with chopsticks).
When timer sounds, use meat thermometer to test poultry for doneness and cook longer if necessary, taking into account that temperature will rise 5 degrees during “resting.” When required temperature is reached, turn off barbecue and allow poultry to rest for 15 minutes (lid on).
Pour dressing into bowl containing the chopped / sliced vegetables; mix with a fork and pour contents of bowl onto salad serving plate.
Slice poultry (across grain) into pieces 1 cm thick. Isolate sufficient to fill 2 rice-paper rolls when chopped and add to container in refrigerator. Put remainder of poultry on top of salad. Serve when diners are ready.
VARIATIONS
Sear the entire piece of tuna for 1 minute each side over maximum heat on the barbecue before slicing. Optionally, rub with olive oil and chili salt before doing so (highly recommended).
Don Tillman's Standardized Meal System Page 7
