I love food, but don't always have the time, inspiration nor the company to want to go all out. And even when I do- I cheat, like with frozen onions, peppers and garlic for instance.

My recent cheat is with Indian food; since authentic is just so hard to accomplish, I thought I'd try "Patak's Tikka Masala" and "Patak's Korma" sauce in a jar- add meat and voilà.

The stuff is good! Finger in the jar good.

Does anyone out there have any yummy cheats?

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Cranky.

I have a colleague who is an incredible cook but also shares her cheats with me. Have some great easy dessert recipes if you're interested.
She also gave me some Thai curry packets which are apparently very authentic so I'll report back when I've tried them.

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Bring on Summer!

I use Pataks extensively and have been known to eat the paste off the spoon. In German supermarkets they have a similar paste, with less ghee called Madi's hot curry or something. Its also very good and costs about 2.4EUR a jar. It's authentic, because the company address is in Inja.

BigD

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You make your own luck.

www.shootingthecheese.ch
The place for fun and chat in Switzerland.

My main confession is use of tinned mushrooms. You wouldn't eat them unless they were submerged in a curry stew or sauce, but they are well MSG-ed and actually taste rather good...

The most important thing is that they keep (for years)


BigD

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You make your own luck.

www.shootingthecheese.ch
The place for fun and chat in Switzerland.

It is worth going to the ''authentic' shops for ingredients. I can make parotha's but why bother when you can get them frozen. TBH, I would much rather make something from scratch than buy it frozen, dehydrated or canned with the exception of tomatoes.
As for canned mushrooms. Are you mental?

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One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art.

In Dave's defense straw mushrooms to be used for thai cooking are ok out of the can (and otherwise hard to find fresh)...

OK, I'm prepared to conced straw mushrooms, but anything else is filth. Slimey and tasteless.

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One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art.

Am I mental ? Not unless they put some really odd chemicals in there...

I have real difficulty eating (properly). I am home once every 2-3days and even then I can rarely be bothered. This means either I go hungry, waste huge amounts of fresh food which survives less time than a salsalover date, or I keep conveniece foods in the cupboard and eat out.

As you may have gathered one of my pet peeves is people talking about buying fresh food from <obscure market in a far part of kanton> or visit ethnic shops <open two hours per week and even then close for lunch>. They can do this because they have the time. I don't but really don't want to swap places with the 50c-shoppers.

So compromise it is
t to the D

Sorry, that was really rude, mental was a poor choice of word. I am in the fortunate postion that I am not going to work, and, as a consequence, can go shopping after I've dropped girl off at school and then spend as much or little time as I want cooking something. If it were only her and me, I probably wouldn't spend as much time in the kitchen as I do. If I am on my own I tend to get pizzas and make some salad to go with it.

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One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art.

I'm proud to be mental. It's quite hard to achieve, being properly loopy.

Anyway, my favourite food cheat at the moment:

Take a small pumpkin (a bit bigger than a grapefruit), cut through upper third (keep "lid), scoop out seeds, add knob of butter and salt and pepper to taste. Pop in microwave for five minutes on full (lid back on), enjoy. Fastest supper EVER.

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A fine is a tax for doing wrong.
A tax is a fine for doing well.