[if you're really that curious,
i wrote about it here]
i wrote about it here]
at any rate, i thought to make myself lunch, but then one thing led to another, and it became a lengthy cooking session. among other things, i simmered a decent vegetable broth.
i never consciously realised it, but when cooking it's key to do several things at once. for example, one chops tomatoes and onions while the pasta is boiling, or stirs the muffin mix while the oven is preheating: simple enough.
the thing is, you can simmer broth while doing something else. for example, you could chop vegetables or yams. afterwards, you can simmer broth AND make a brown rice and yam porridge in the rice cooker .. while doing something else.
in fact, as long as there's liquid in the big pot at a simmer, you can throw in potatoes to parboil for hash browns, and fish them out when you need them.
or you can toss in a few roma tomatoes for less than a minute, so that you can peel them and then dice them for a pasta salad. you can also toss in a few peeled cloves of garlic, because the flavor mellows with boiling .. similar but not the same as roasting garlic, but equally easy to make into paste and stir into pasta.
better yet, you can toss in the stems from spinach leaves for extra flavor into the broth, because you need the spinach both
* for a pasta salad .. the same pasta salad which uses the tomatoes,
* and for a spinach omelette, which will accompany the hash browns to come.
the moral: never underestimate a big pot of water. it gives and it takes, fairly and understandably.
